Sermons on ecclesiastical subjects

SERMONS.

SERMONS

ON

ECCLESIASTICAL SUBJECTS.

BY

HENRY EDWARD,

ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.

FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON:

BURNS, GATES, AND COMPANY,

17, 18 Portinan Street and 63 Paternoster Row.
l8?0.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

THE RELATIONS OF ENGLAND TO CHRISTIANITY.

1-83

SERMON I.
/"HELP) NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST.

Preached in the First Provincial Council of Westminster, 1852.

" I have compassion on the multitude ; for, behold, they have
now been with Me three days, and have nothing to eat." —
St. Mark, viii, 13 87—114

SERMON II.

DOGMATIC AUTHORITY SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE.

Preached in the Second Provincial Council of Westminster, 1855.

" What man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a
man that is in him ? So the things also that are of God, no
manjsnoweth but the Spirit of God."— I Cor., ii, 11. 118—145

SERMON III.

THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

Preached in the Third Provincial Council of Westminster, 1859.

" Wisdom hath built herself a house."— Prover bs, xi, 1. 149 169

VI CONTENTS.

SERMON IV.

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESTTS.

Preached in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, London, on the
Feast of Saint Ignatius, 1852.

•

" Ye shall be hated of all men for My Name's sake."— St.

Mark,xii,13 173—194

SERMON V.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

Preached in the Church of Saint Gregory the Great in Rome, at the
solemn Benediction of the Right Rev. Abbot Burder, 1853.

" Thomas answered and said to him : My Lord and my God.
Jesus saith to him : Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas,
thou hast believed ; blessed are they that have not seen,
and have believed."— St. John, xx, 28, 29. . . 197—223

SERMON VI.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNEJ

Preached in the Church of Saint Isidore, Rome, on the Feast of Saint
Patrick, 1857.

" We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excel-
lency may be of the power of God, and not of us."— II Cor.,
iv, 7 . . 227—260

SERMON VII.

OCCISI ET CORONATI.

Preached at the Solemn Mass of Requiem for those who fell in battle

for the liberties of the Church and the sovereignty of its

Head, 1860.

" Ye shall be hated by all nations for My Name's sake."—
St. Matt., xxiv, 9. . 263—283

CONTENTS. Vll

SERMON VIII.

UNITY IN DIVERSITY THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH.

Preached at the Consecration of the Priory and Pro-cathedral of Saint
Michael, Hereford, 1860.

" We being many, are one body in Christ." — Rom., xii, 5. 287—307
SERMON IX.'

THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

Preached in the Church of Saint Mary of the Angels, Bayswater, on the
feast of Saint Charles, 1860,

" The Good Shepherd gireth His life for His sheep."— St.
John, x, 11 311—339

SERMON X.

THE MANTI>E OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

Preached in the Chapel of the Benedictine Convent, Hammersmith, at the

delivery of the Pallium to the Most Rev. Ferdinand English,

late Archbishop of Port-of-Spain.

" And he took up the mantle of Elias."— IV Kings, ii, 13. 342—357
SERMON XI.

THE POSTERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.
Preached in the Church of Saint Roch, Paris, 1861.

" Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that
are above, -where Christ is sitting at the right hand of
God."— Colossians, iii, 1 361—887

Vlll CONTENTS.

SERMON XII.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

Preached in the Church of Saint Mary of the Angels, Bayswater, at the
imparting of the Papal Benediction and Indulgences, 1862.

" And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the
altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of
God, and for the testimony which they held." — Apoc.,
vi, 9 391-412

SERMON XIII.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.
Preached at the opening of the Church of Saint Boniface, London, 1862.

" Son of Man, dost thou think these bones shall live ? And I
answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest." — Ezech., xxxvii,
3 415—441

INDEX, , 443—455

ERRATA.

Page 5, line 6 from foot, for del read 77 oet.
„ 46, „ 7, for Scrougall read Scougall.
„ 98, „ 2 from foot, for Eutychus read Eutyches.
„ 141, „ 9 „ for ripe read rife.

,, 142, Note, last line, dele as yet.
„ 227, line 6 from foot, for Souls read Saints.
„ 231, „ 8 „ for offices read office.

„ 253, ,, 10 ., for large read larger.

„ 307, ,,9 ,, for when read where.

„ 353, „ 14 „ for life read lip.

„ 425, lines 6, 17, 25, for Charlemagne read Charles Martel.

THE RELATIONS OF ENGLAND

TO

CHRISTIANITY.

IF the constant and increasing press of active work,
which, for the last ten years, has rendered it difficult,
if not impossible, for me to find the quiet or time
necessary for writing, will hereafter permit, it is my
purpose to publish in succession three small volumes,
of which the present is the first. In this will be found a
number of Sermons on subjects of an Ecclesiastical and
Historical kind. In the second I intend to treat of
questions which relate to the foundations of the Faith ;
and in the third, of matters of a practical and devotional
sort. I am only induced to publish by a conviction
of the vital nature of the truths which may be contained
in them. The sacredness and sovereignty of divine
faith makes it a duty to use words as the sincere
medium of thoughts, and to use the fewest and the sim-
plest that will convey our meaning. In such words I
endeavoured for many years to say all that I knew of
Truth to those who then would listen to me. I

have had no other motive than a perpetual and

1

DIVINE COMMISSION IMPLIES A

ardent desire to give to others the truth as God had
given it to me. I am fully conscious of the great imper-
fection of the books which I wrote, while as yet I knew
the revelation of the day of Pentecost only in a broken
and fragmentary way. As I saw the truth, so I spoke
it ; not without cost to myself. But I had no choice.
I could not but declare that which was evidently to
me " the truth as it is in Jesus." The works I then
published, even without the private records I have by
me, are enough to mark the progressive, but slow, and
never receding advance of my convictions, from the
first conception of a visible Church, its succession and
witness for Christ, to the full perception and manifes-
tation of its divine organization of Head and mem-
bers, of its supernatural prerogatives of indefectible
life, indissoluble unity, infallible discernment, and
enunciation of the Faith. Of those books I will say no-
thing, but that even in their great imperfections they
have an unity, that is of progress, and a directness of
movement, always affirming positively and definitely
such truths of the perfect revelation of God as succes-
sively arose upon me. I was as one manu tentans,
meridie ccecutiem, but a divine Guide, as yet unknown
to me, always led me on. I can well remember how,
at the outset of my life as a pastor, as I then already
believed, the necessity of a divine commission forced

DIVINE MESSAGE, CERTAIN AND INFALLIBLE.

itself upon me: next, how the necessity of a divine
certainty for the message I had to deliver became, if
possible, more evident. A divine, that is, an infallible
message, by a human messenger is still the truth of
God ; but a human, or fallible message, by a messenger
having a divine commission, would be the source of
error, illusion, and all evil. I then perceived the prin-
ciple of Christian tradition as an evidence of the Truth,
and of the visible unity of the Church as the guaran-
tee of that tradition. But it was many years before I
perceived that such a Christian tradition was no more
than human, and therefore fallible. I had reached
the last point to which human history could guide me
towards the Church of God. There remained one
point more, to know that the Church is not only a
human witness in the order of history, but a divine
witness in the order of supernatural facts. It was not
my intention when I began to enter into these details.
I have never done so in public till now, and 1 hardly
know whether to cancel what I have written, or to
proceed in what I have to say. I have never thought
it necessary to publish the reasons of my submission to
the Church of God. I felt that those who knew me
knew my reasons, for they had followed my words and
acts : and that they who did not know me would not
care to know. I felt, too, that the best expositor of

4 THE .HEADSHIP OF CHRIST THE

a man's conduct is his life ; and that in a few years,
and in the way of duty, I should naturally and un-
consciously make clear and intelligible to all who care
to know, the motives of faith which governed me in
that time of public and private trial. Eleven years have
passed since then, and I may now gather together a
few of the declarations of faith which the duties of my
state have required of me. On reading them over for
publication, I am struck by the unity, almost to same-
ness, which runs through them. I find in them also
the natural and final result of the truths and principles
which run through the works written in the preceding
thirteen years. The reader will not, I hope, be weary
of the frequent recurrence, I might more truly say of
the perpetual presence, of three great truths, which
pervade the following pages: I mean, first, the presence
of our Divine Lord Jesus Christ in the Church, not
only as its Head, but as the Fountain of life, intelli-
gence, and action, both in the interior realm of its
spiritual perfection, and in its exterior manifestation
and jurisdiction over the nations of the world. Se-
condly, the divine organization and supernatural fruit-
fulness of the mystical body of the Visible Church on
earth. Thirdly, the perpetual presence and office of
the Holy Ghost as the personal and divine Teacher of
mankind, from which flow two divine laws or endow-

FOUNTAIN OF INFALLIBILITY. 5

ments of the Visible Church, the one its infallible
voice, the other its indivisible unity.

Now, of these three truths, the last is that which
converted the convictions of my reason into the con-
sciousness of faith, and cast upon the fragmentary
truths of my past life the full illumination of the day
of Pentecost. I can remember when it first began to
rise upon me. As I have already ventured so far
with personal narrative, for the first time, and perhaps
for the last, I will go on. When a well known work
on Development of Christian Doctrine came out, I felt
compelled to examine into the nature of faith and
the principles of divine certainty. The subject arose
progressively and in order before me. I saw first
that the matter to be ascertained and identified is the
revelation of the day of Pentecost. Secondly, that
the xgirygiov, by which it is to be ascertained and
identified, is the tradition of the Church, including
Holy Scripture as a part of that tradition. Thirdly,
that the Kgirfa whose discernment alone can apply
this criterion, must be not the individual, but asi
IxxXjjov'a, the Church in every age. And, fourthly,
that the jeg/tf/g, or process of discernment by which
the Church is to identify truth, if it be only the
intellectual powers of its members taken collectively,
would be no more than natural and fallible, and there-

O THE DISCERNMENT OF THE CHURCH

fore could afford no basis of divine certainty for faith.
And, lastly, that as the Church is a supernatural crea-
tion, supernatural in its origin, its attributes, its action,
and its office, then certainly the discernment by which
in all ages, from the first to the nineteenth, it identifies
the Faith once delivered to the Saints, must likewise be
supernatural, and there fore infallible. 1 remember how
the words of Melchior Canus used to return upon me,
"Consensus sanctorum omnium sensus Spiritus Sancti
est."* And I saw that the "consent of the Fathers*' was
an inadequateand human conception of ahigherand di-
vine fact, namely, of the unity of illumination that flows
from the Presence of the Holy Ghost in the Universal
Church and inundates it with the perpetual light of
the day of Pentecost. I remember also how the words
of Melchior Canus to Cajetan expressed my surren-
der to himself : " Vicimus utrique ; uterque nostrum
palmam refert; tumei; ego erroris."f This truth,
which has governed all my later life, came upon me
gradually, slowly, and at first dubiously, at the time
when the tumults about the See of Hereford were
giving place to the tumults about the Sacrament of
Baptism. I had believed in, honoured, and served the
Church of England, in the belief that it held and taught
the whole revelation of the faith. When I came to

* De Locis, Theol., lib. viii, c. 3. f Ibid-

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 7

see that the revelation of faith is preserved in the
Church by the presence and assistance of a divine and
infallible person, I was wont to say that the churches
of Rome and England, though they be in popular
opposition, and even in verbal contradiction, must be
in substantial agreement. I had by that time a pro-
fuse and immutable conviction that the Holy Ghost
perpetually and infallibly guides the Church, and
speaks by its voice. I lingered still in hope that the
Church of England was a part of that Church in which
He dwells and through which He perpetually speaks.
" Me lusit amabilis insania," which the facts before my
eyes rudely dispelled. As a disciple of the Church of
God, infallible in all ages, by virtue of the perpetual
presence and assistance of the Spirit of Truth, I had
no decision to make. The Church of England forsook
me, not I it. Through it I had believed in the Church
of my baptismal Creed, and to that Church I returned
with as much sorrow of the natural order as falls to the
lot of most men in the trials of a life, but with a light
of reason, and consciousness of faith, and peace of con-
science, which more than overpaidall sorrows and sacri-
fices ; and over which no shadow of a momentary doubt
has ever passed, in the eleven years from that time to
this. I have been in these years filled with wonder that
in the bjaze of light which came upon me, I was so slow

OFFICE OF THE HOLY GHOST

to perceive it. And I can only in it acknowledge the
grace of our Heavenly Father, who opened my eyes
at last. It is to me like the answer to an enigma,
which, while unknown, baffles all our thought; when
once known, is so self-evident that we can never forget
it. All my life long I had been repeating my Bap-
tismal Creed, " I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the
Holy Catholic Church." I had learned to understand
the first paragraph, respecting the Father arid His
work as Creator, and the second, respecting the Son
and His work as Redeemer ; but over the third para-
graph, respecting the Holy Ghost and His work as the
Sanctifier and Guide of individuals and of the Church,
there was a veil. The Protestant Reformation had
obscured it by contradictions and by controversies ;
Anglicanism had refined upon its meaning with a sub-
tilty and an incoherence which rendered any definite
exposition impossible. I had studied and analysed
every Anglican writer I could find, who treated of
the subject of the Church, as especially Bilson, Field,
Laud, Hammond, Pearson, and Thorndike, besides
many lesser authors. I found that hardly two of them
agreed together, except in rejecting the visible and
indivisible unity of the Church, and the supreme and
universal jurisdiction of its Visible Head. I found
likewise that they all alike rejected the perpetual office

OMITTED BY ANGLICAN WRITERS.

of the Holy Ghost as the Divine Guide of the Church
in every age. It then became manifest to me that,
before I could understand the nature and office of
the Church, I must first understand the mission and
office of the Holy Ghost: and in the day in which I
came to understand this third and last paragraph of
my Baptismal Creed, the Church of God, one as God
is one, numerically and indivisibly one : infallible in
its knowledge, and in its enunciation of the Faith by
reason of the perpetual in-dwelling and assistance of
the Holy Ghost, arose in all its majesty before me.
I saw then that, to understand the Creed of our Bap-
tism, is to be a Catholic: and that in the day when
we believe in the personality and office of the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, we submit to the Church,
which alone is Catholic and Roman.

Now, inasmuch as this one truth pervades all that
is contained in this volume, I think it well to state
it as adequately and explicitly as I can, within the
narrow limits of a preface : and I therefore do so in
the following words :

I. It is evident from Holy Scripture, that the Holy
Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, to be the Guide
and Teacher of the Faithful until the second coming
of the Son of God. It is hardly necessary to offer
proofs of this truth, but it may be well to define what

1 0 PERSONAL ADVENT OF THE HOLY GHOST

is the nature of the dispensation of the Spirit under
which we are placed.

II. The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost
and yet He was in the world from the beginning ; as
God He shared with the Father and Son in the-
creation of all things, and He " moved over the
waters." — Gen. i, 2.

III. Also the Holy Spirit wrought in the servants
of God from the beginning, illuminating and sancti-
fying Patriarchs, Prophets, Psalmists, and Saints.

IV. How then can He be said to come on the day
of Pentecost? If He was already in the world, how
could He be said to come ?

V. The true answer is to be found in asking the
same question respecting the Son of God. He also
came into the world, yet from the beginning He was
in the world, uthe world was made by Him, and
without Him was made nothing that was made." —
St. John, i, 3, and Hebrews, i, 2.

He was also with the Church in the wilderness, yet
after 4000 years, according to promise and prophecy,
He came : that is in a new manner, and for a new pur-
pose. He came by Incarnation : that as a Man He
might redeem the world, and become the "Beginning
of the Creation of God." — Apoc., iii, 14,

VI. In like manner the Holy Spirit came in a new

NOT FULFILLED TILL PENTECOST. 1 1

manner and for a new purpose^ with a fulness and
perpetuity of His Presence unknown before.

VII. We see in Holy Scripture that the dispensa-
tions of God are progressive, succeeding and perfect-
ing one another. The Law was " a shadow of good
things to come;" the Gospel is the substance. —
Heb., x, 1.

Under the Law individuals were illuminated ; under
the Gospel it is promised they shall "all be taught of
God." — St. John, vi, 45. Before the day of Pentecost
individuals here and there were gifted with Vision and
Prophecy, afterwards as Joel foretold and St. Peter
interprets, the Spirit shall be "poured upon all flesh."
— Acts, ii, 17. That is to say, the fulness of the
Spirit shall be given in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

VIII. Our Lord reveals this progression in the dis-
pensations of God when He says: " It is expedient to
you that I go, for if I go not, the Paraclete will not
come to you, but if I go, I will send Him to you." —
St. John, xvi, 7. As the Father had sent the Son,
so the Father and the Son shall send the Holy Spirit.

St. John writes (chap, vii, 39) : " As yet the Spirit
was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified."
The coming of the Holy Ghost was purchased by the
Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of
the Son of God.

12 OFFICE OF THE SON PERPETUATED

IX. Our Lord also points out the difference be-
tween His own sojourn upon Earth and the abiding
of the Holy Spirit. " I go unto the Father." " I will
ask the Father, and He shall give you another Para-
clete, that He may abide with you for ever."—-
St. John, xiv, 13, 16.

The dispensation of the Son visible upon Earth was
transient; the dispensation of the Holy Spirit invisibly
dwelling in His stead is perpetual. The Second Per-
son in the Holy Trinity has reascended ; the Third
Person has descended to dwell in His place until the
Son of God shall come to judge the world.

X. The office of the Holy Spirit is declared by our
Lord to be "to lead into all truth;" "to bring all
things to mind;" "to show things to come;" "to
take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us."
— St. John, xiv, 26; xvi, 13, 15.

XI. But on all this there can be no question. We
are under the dispensation of the Spirit (II Cor., iii,
3, 6,) as St. Paul argues, contrasting it with the dis-
pensation of the law. And, therefore, we are under
the guidance of a Divine Teacher, as truly as the
Apostles in Jerusalem. They were guided by the Son
of God personally and visibly; we, by the Spirit of
God as personally though invisibly present with us.

XII. And the office of the Holy Ghost, as the

BY THE HOLY GHOST^TILL SECOND ADVENT. 13

guide and teacher of the faithful, is as full and per-
fect in all its powers and prerogatives at this hour, as
it was on the day of Pentecost. It is identically the
same office, and has been perpetual to this day.

XIII. For in what does the office of the Holy
Spirit consist, but in illuminating and sanctifying the
elect servants of God? This is a perpetual work,
and will continue until the last of the elect shall be
gathered in at the coming of Jesus Christ.

XIV. And what are the means and instruments of
illumination and sanctification but the doctrines of
Truth and the Sacraments of Grace ? The Doctrines
and Sacraments, therefore, are, and ever shall be,
perpetually and divinely preserved, until the works
of which they are the means and instruments shall
be fully accomplished.

XV. These reasons, which, if need be, might be
much expanded, prove that the Holy Spirit is at this
hour, as he was in the beginning, the Guide and
Teacher of the Faithful ; and that they are under a
Divine authority, and stand related to the invisible
presence of a Divine Person, as truly present in the
midst of them, as our Divine Lord was present
among the Apostles and Disciples at Jerusalem.

It is also evident from Holy Scripture that the
Church is the organ whereby the Holy Spirit teaches

14 JUDAIZING TENDENCY OF PROTESTANTISM.

the faithful. There is no controversy between the
Catholic Church and those who hold the doctrine of
the Holy Trinity on the following points : —

I. That the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person.

II. That He is now present in the world.

III. That He guides and teaches the faithful, one
by one, if they seek His illumination as they ought.

But one point — and a chief point of the office of
the Holy Spirit — yet remains to be stated. And this
point is denied, so far as I know, by every Commu-
nion separated from the Catholic Church by, or
since, the Protestant Reformation.

I mean that the office of the Holy Ghost is not
only to guide and teach individuals one by one as He
did before the Day of Pentecost, but also since that
day, to guide the mystical Body of Christ, which is
the Church.

It appears to me,' that all who reject this truth fall
back into the state of man under the Patriarchal or
Mosaic Dispensations, before the Son was yet incar-
nate, or the Gift of Pentecost bestowed upon the
Church.

IV. The effect of this retrogression in the dispen-
sations of God, is that the Gospel is lowered to the
Law ; the substance to the shadow.

The Jewish Church is supposed to be a parallel to

THE JEWISH CHURCH A TYPE, BUT 15

the Church of Christ; its declensions are assumed as
proofs that the Universal Church may likewise err.

V. Now there is one impassable barrier of difference
between the Jewish Church and the Church of Christ.

The Jewish Church was not the Mystical Body of
the Incarnate Son: it had no divine head in Heaven:
it was not inhabited by the Personal Descent and in-
dwelling of the Holy Ghost.

And that because the Son was not yet Incarnate,
nor " the Spirit yet given."

VI. The Church, therefore, or Mystical Body of
the Incarnate Son, is a new creation of omnipotence,
of which there were of old types, shadows, and pro-
mises, but nothing like in kind.

VII. St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians sets be-
fore us the formation and constitution of this Mys-
tical Body, connecting it with —

1, The Ascension of the Incarnate Son into Hea-
ven, and —

2. The Descent of the Holy Ghost.

In chap, iv, he says, that by the Ascension God
hath put all things under His feet (i.e. of Jesus
Christ), and gave Him to be Head over all things
" to the Church which is His Body, the fulness of
Him that filleth all in all."

He carries out the same doctrine, saying —

16 NOT THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST.

One body and one spirit, " wherefore He saith,
ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave
gifts to men. Now that He ascended, what is it
because He also descended first into the lower parts
of the Earth ? He that descended is the same also
that ascended above all the Heavens, that He might
fill all things."

We have here the Ascension and the gift of the
Holy Spirit, whereby the head fills the whole body.

Then immediately follows the constitution and
formation of the body.

" And he gave to some Apostles, and some Pro-
phets, and other some Evangelists, and other some
Pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the Saints,
for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the
Body of Christ until we all meet into the unity of
the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God
unto a perfect man unto the measure of the age of
the fulness of Christ."

We have here a visible Ministry of Pastors guiding
and uniting a visible body, ordained, consecrated,
and illuminated by the descent of the Spirit.

Then follows the end for which this visible body
was constituted, viz., the unity and certainty of faith.
" That henceforth we be no more children tossed to
and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine,

UNITY THE RESULT AND ORGAN OF CERTAINTY : 1 7

by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by
which they lie in wait to deceive ; but doing the truth
in charity we may in all things grow up in Him, who
is the Head, even Christ. From whom the whole body
being compacted and fitly joined together, by what
every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the
measure of every part, maketh increase of the body
unto the edifying of itself in charity." — ch. iv, 4, 16.

IX. Now in these passages we have revealed to us
a new mystery, newly created by Divine Omnipo-
tence, of which the former dispensation of God
before the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, had no
likeness or precedent.

The Apostle sets before us : —

1. The Head, glorified at the right hand of God;
being Himself both God and man.

2. The Body, made up of all the Saints of God in
the world unseen, and the visible side of the Apostles,
Pastors, and Faithful upon Earth.

3. The Mystical Person made up of both the Head
and the Body, inhabited, illuminated, compacted,
and perfected by the Descent and Presence of the
Holy Spirit.

X. It is further evident: —

1. That this mystical Person, which in the Epistle
to the Corinthians he calls " Christ," is a Society not

1 8 CONVERSELY, DIVISION CAUSE OF ERROR.

only morally one by perfect union, but numerically
one by indivisible unity.

2. That it is organised and compacted part with
part, and bound together as the limbs and members
of a living man.

3. That it contains in itself a perpetuity and suc-
cession : a power of self-edification and self-produc-
tion in virtue of the Divine Life, which from the
Head descended to dwell in it.

4. That one great end of its constitution is the
perpetuity of Truth and the Unity of Faith.

5. That its authority is divine and changeless, not
human, " tossed to and fro."

6. That the members of this body are guided and
preserved from being carried about by inherence as
members in the body.

That they depend on the Body, not the Body on
them.

7. That this body as a whole is the dwelling place of
the Spirit, and the organ of His guidance and teaching.

XI. Now this is the point where, so far as I
can understand them, all opponents of the Roman
Catholic Church since the Protestant Reformation
reject the office of the Holy Spirit.

They admit His teaching in individuals, but deny
His perpetual guidance of the body.

UNION OF THE HOLY GHOST WITH THE CHURCH 19

The former is as old as Creation, the latter is part
of the dispensation of which the beginning is to be
found in the Incarnation of the Son of God.

XII. And the point is characteristically the mystery
of the Holy Spirit, reserved for the latter times of
grace; so that to reject it is to reject a vital part of
the mystery of the Holy Trinity, as it is revealed in
relation to the redemption of the world.

XIII. Between the office of the Son and the office
of the Spirit of God, there is an analogy.

The Son was manifest in a Natural Body, that is
the Manhood which He assumed to Himself.

The Holy Spirit is manifest in a Mystical Body,
which He assumed as the Temple in which to dwell,
and the Organ through which to teach and work in
the world.

Again,

The Godhead and Manhood in Christ were united
by an act of the Divine Will, never again to be
parted.

In like manner,

The Holy Spirit is united to the Mystical Body by
an act of the Divine Will, and though individuals
may fall from the Body, the Body can never be
parted from the Spirit of God, who dwells in it.

XIV. The difference, therefore, between the Union

20 INDISSOLUBLE AND ETERNAL.

of the Holy Spirit with the Soul of each individual,
and His union with the Body of Christ, is that the
former union is conditional, and depends on the
human will ; the latter is absolute, and depends on
the Divine Will alone.

XV. Individuals are on probation ; if they believe,
repent, obey, persevere, the union between them and
the Spirit of God endures ; if they will not persevere,
it is dissolved.

But the Body is not on probation, it is not an
individual, the union between it and the Spirit of
God cannot be dissolved.

XVI. All individuals may fall away from grace,
and are therefore defectible, but the line of the
faithful is indefectible.

XVII. Our Divine Lord said : —

" On this Rock I will build my Church, and the
gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."

The perpetuity and indefectibility of the Church
is thus divinely revealed ; and this includes the per-
petuity and indefectibility of the Faith on which
the Church is built.

If the superstructure be indefectible, much more
the foundation : and the union of the Faith with the
Church is therefore perpetual and indefectible.
They are divinely united, never to be divided.

THE CHURCH NOT ON PROBATION, 2 I

This is only another form under which to express
the indissoluble union between the Spirit of Trutli
and the Church, the organ of His teaching.

XVIII. The same is the meaning of St. Paul, when
he calls the " Church of the Living God the Pillar
and Ground (i.e. basis) of the Trutli.

The Church is the divinely supported repository
of the Truth, and the organ of its Publication to the
world.

XIX. The same again is the meaning of our
Divine Lord's words: —

" A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid."
He intends to describe the Church one, visible,

and manifest to all the world, the witness and Herald

of the Revelation of God.

XX. The same again is the meaning of His words
to His disciples, " Ye are the light of the world."

The instrument and organ of His Truth to the
World is the visible society of the Faithful, that is the
Church. He likens it to a light, self -manifesting and
self-evident, revealed by its own nature. And He ad ds,
as explaining His own design, and the end for which
He would constitute His Church visible in the world,
" Neither do men light a candle and put it under
a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light
unto all that are in the House."

22 BUT THE INSTRUMENT OF PROBATION.

If the Church be not the Organ of Truth, the
candle is put under a bushel.

XXI. To pass from illustrations to the thing illus-
trated, we find, —

1. That our Lord constituted a visible body of
Apostles.

2. That on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit
descended on them, and, as St. Paul teaches in the
Ephesians, filled and united the Mystical Body with
a new, divine, inextinguishable Life, so that it be-
came " One Body and One Spirit."

3. That this Body, whether united at Jerusalem,
or spread throughout the Earth, was absolutely one,
both morally by perfect union, and numerically by
absolute and Indivisible Unity; having One Lord,
One Faith, One Baptism, One God and Father.

4. That its universality consists not only in mere
extension, but in absolute sameness, continuity, and
identity throughout the world.

That when this one Body spoke with authority,
its claim to teach for God was, " It seemed good to
the Holy Ghost and to us." — Acts, xv, 28.

XXII. And, therefore, St. John writes to the faith-
ful in unity with the Church: " Little children, it is
the last hour, and as ye have heard that Antichrist
cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists,

DENIAL OF THE CORPORATE OFFICE 23

whereby we know that it is the last hour. They
went out from us, but they were not of us; for if
they had been of us, they would no doubt have re-
mained with us, but" they went out, " that they may
be made manifest that they are not all of us."

u But you have the unction from the Holy One,
and know all things."

" Let the unction which you have received from
Him abide in you, and you have no need that any
man teach you."— I. St. John, ii, 18, 19, 20, 27.

That is to say : —

Ye who are united to the one Mystical Body, which
is the Organ of the Holy One, the Spirit of Truth,
are anointed and guided by a Divine Authority, and
have no need of human teachers, " That any man
teach you, being taught of God."

XXIII. From all these testimonies of Holy Scrip-
ture it is evident —

1. That the Holy Spirit teaches in the world at
this hour, and exercises in all its fulness of powers
and prerogatives, the office of Illuminator, Guide,
and Teacher, which He assumed on the Day of
Pentecost.

2. That as the Organ of His Voice and guidance at
that time was the one visible Society of the Apostles
and Faithful, so now at this it is the one visible Society,

24 OF THE HOLY GHOST THE SIN OF THE REFORMATION.

descended from them and spread abroad in undivided
unity and perfect identity throughout the world.
To this I must add as a general conclusion: —
That it is impossible to reject the indissoluble Union
of the Spirit of Truth with the Universal Church, and
His perpetual guidance of the same, without rejecting
a main and vital part of the office of the Holy Spirit,
and therefore of the Economy of the Holy Trinity in
relation to the redemption through Jesus Christ.

Such then, is the formal object of faith, the veracity
of God revealing His Truth to us, and not only by ar
act of revelation eighteen hundred years ago, but also
by sustaining His revelation, whole and inviolate, in
all its fulness and integrity, through all times, and
by proposing it to us by His Divine voice in every
age. On this I do not purpose now to dwell, because
I hope to do so more fully hereafter. But, inasmuch
as in the following sermons I have frequently spoken
of the relation of England since the Reformation, to
the Church and to the Faith, and inasmuch as the limits
of a sermon did not permit me to speak as fully as I
desired, and in addressing Catholics it would have
been out of season and place to say much, neverthe-
less, in publishing these sermons to take their fate
among objectors and antagonists, it is necessary to
speak more at large. I will, therefore, set down, at

PROGRESS OF UNBELIEF IN ENGLAND. 25

least in outline, the basis on which the assertions in
these sermons rest.

The more I have studied the religious and political
history of England since the Anglican Reformation,
and the more I have observed the currents of thought,
the dominant tendencies in English society at this day,
the more I have become convinced that the English
people are upon an inclined plane. Men may strive to
retard their descent, but it is inevitable. The laws of
nature are not more irresistible and unerring than the
law which generates unbelief from the first principle
of private judgment. Even in our own lifetime, the
advance of indifference, rationalism, infidelity, secu-
larism, and atheism, both objective and subjective, is
vast and perceptible. The last ten years have de-
veloped these evils as with a tropical growth : and the
relation of England to the Catholic Church and to
Christianity, and even to the Christian society of the
world, are no longer what they were, when the men of
our day first entered upon life. I can conceive the
pity with which some will regard me, when I say that
I trace this development of intellectual, social, and
spiritual anarchy to one cause, — separation from the
Holy See, — because separation from the Holy See is
separation from the Universal Church, and to be se-
parated from the Church is to be deprived of its divine

2b ROME THE SOLE SOURCE OF STABILITY.

guidance and support. This I will endeavour briefly to
verify by undeniable facts in the hi story of our country.

The prerogative of St. Peter in confirming the faith
of his brethren is luminously manifested by contrast-
ing the immutability of Rome with the vicissitudes of
the nations of the Christian world. Of the Roman
people alone can be said what St. Cyprian wrote, that
among them a defection in faith had never been.
Arianism and Nestorianism overcast the eastern
nations, Donatism the southern, modern heresies the
northern: but in Rome the divine tradition of the
faith has descended in full and stead fast vigour through
every age. Christian and Catholic by the very law of
its life, it is the centre and the fountain of Christianity
and of Catholicism to the nations of the world.
Their relations to Christianity and to the Catholic
Church may be measured by their relations to Rome.
These given, the others are ascertained.

No nation, except perhaps Spain, has ever
undergone such vicissitudes in its faith as England.
Ireland, by its side, received the faith from its first
apostles, and has continued immutable and constant
to this hour. England, in everything of this world
mightier and more imperial, has been twice disin-
herited of its faith, and has twice in great part re-
ceived the gift of eternal life from Ireland.

VICISSITUDES OF CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND. 27

My object is not so much to trace out the variations
of England, but to exhibit its present relations to the
Faith and Church of Jesus Christ. I shall, therefore,
attempt no more than to indicate the phases of Chris-
tian life through which it has passed : from its first
union with Rome to its present rebellion against the
Vicar of our Lord; that is, in its British, Saxon,
Norman, and Protestant periods.

England of the British, without doubt, received its
regeneration from Rome, the source of its civil life
and order ; and its fidelity to the Christian Faith and
Church is attested by the presence of its Bishops in
the Council of Aries and of Sardica. When infected by
Pelagianism of its own growth, it was cleansed by the
Roman Pontiffs: and throughout its early Christianity
we hardly trace it but in its relations to the Holy See.

When the vials which were poured out upon the
Rome of the Pagans forced its legions to withdraw
from Britain, and the whole island was submerged by
an inundation of heathenism, the vigilant charity of
the Roman Pontiffs drew once more the outlines of the
Heavenly city upon its wasted soil, and the Catholic
Church again arose as a fabric of light in the night-
season, uniting, assimilating, and sanctifying the con-
flicting and discordant kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
Then began the most beautiful epoch of English

28 CATHOLIC UNITY OF SAXON ENGLAND.

history. At no time was England so purely Christian
and Catholic as then : so child-like in faith, so docile to
the Holy See. The wonderful influence of ecclesi-
astical legislation penetrated and possessed the whole
land. Jesus, His Immaculate Mother, and His Saints,
took Saxon England as their special inheritance. The
whole civil life of the people and the whole subdivision
of the country was governed by Faith. The preroga-
tives of the Prince and the decrees of legislatures were
directed by the Church. The Bishops and Barons sat
and legislated side by side, so that historians were
wont to say that Parliament had the aspect of Councils.
In the Courts of the Counties the Mass-Thane and
the World-Thane sat in one tribunal, and administered
thelaw with concurrent jurisdiction. Christianity was,
as the English jurists used to say, a part and parcel
of the law of England : and the Catholic Church was
the form and mould of civil government. It was a
time fruitful in saints from every rank and class . but,
above all from the highest. A special grace was upon
the royal houses. Some thirty Saxon Princes made
pilgrimage to Rome : and some fourteen of both sexes
took the habit of religion : many are upon the altars of
the Church. It was Saxon England which first laid
at the feet of the Successor of the Apostle the tribute
of Saint Peter's Pence ; and the Catholic world at this

NATIONALISM THE PRELUDE AND PRINCIPLE OF SCHISM. 29

day in renewing this oblation of filial piety render a
tribute of Christian honour to the Island of Saints.
It was during this period, that is, between A.D. 800
and 1000, the most eminently Catholic time in En-
glish history, that the foundation and the outline of
the civil order of England which endure to this day
were laid. The permanent principles and stable ele-
ments of its greatness descend to us from the ages in
which England was the Island of Saints. We may
take as the type and recapitulation of Catholic Eng-
land the Saint and King with whom its purest Catholic
greatness expired, St. Edward the Confessor, whose
memory was long invoked by the English people
under their iron masters. u The laws of good King
Edward" became after the Conquest the burden of
their lament and appeal, and the golden age to which
they stretched out their hands in vain.

Then came a third period, in which the relations of
England to the Holy See were extensively changed.
It is not to be denied that in Norman England we see
the first rise of the monarchy to its full stature and
greatness. But it is in that same period that the first
seeds of its modern evils, including even the so-called
Reformation, were cast. With the Norman entered
into England the jealousy and insubordination of its
Princes towards the Holy See, the proud spirit of

30 NATIONAL CHURCHES ESSENTIALLY SCHISMATICAL.

national independence, and a secular or anti-ecclesias-
tical spirit. The five centuries from the Conquest to
Henry the Eighth were fruitful and majestic in every
thing which glorified worldly pride, but they were
centuries of decline in the Kingdom of God. As
England grew greater in secular grandeur, it grew
less in spiritual fertility. The saints of the centuries
before the Conquest are many, those of the centuries
after it are few. The kings of England, with few
exceptions, from William the First to Henry the
Eighth, were often in conflict with the Roman Pon-
tiffs ; and the saints of those times won their crowns
as martyrs and confessors, in resisting the anti-Catho-
lic violence of their sovereigns, as Saint Edmund and
Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Saint Richard of Chi-
chester, and the like. As the Saxon period closed
significantly and typically in Saint Edward, King and
Confessor, the Norman period closed fittingly and
prophetically in Henry the Eighth. He did but give
final expression and effect to the secular and schis-
matical nationalism which the whole line of Norman
kings had laid down in their legislation, and vindi-
cated in their acts. The blood which was shed in the
transept of Canterbury was only the first great drop
of the storm by which Henry the Eighth and Eliza-
beth stained and steeped the soil of England.

CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION THE OFFSPRING OF FAITH. 3 1

In estimating the condition of England since the
Reformation, it is necessary to keep the Norman
period before our eyes. No people can ever break
so abruptly with its antecedents as that its past will
not live on, and actively work upon its present.
A distinguished French writer, De Tocqueville, has
lately shown how vast a body of social and political
traditions and principles ran on unchanged from the
France before to the France after the first great
revolution. And yet we have been wont to believe
that the continuity of the civil society of France was
so absolutely cut asunder, that the " ancien regime"
is gone, and a new creation set up in its place. So it
is with England before and after the Reformation.
The jealous claims of royal supremacy in princes, the
selfish nationalism and antipathy to foreigners, a
remnant of barbarism as the ^sv^Xaaia among the
Greeks, and a wilful and obstinate independence of
individual character, all these things are traceable
before the great outbreak of the Reformation, and
they run on in the same channels to this day.

By the Christian society of Europe, I do not mean
the Christian Church, but the social and spiritual
order which under the action of the Church has com-
pacted the races and peoples of Europe by a domestic
organization into Christian nations, and by interna-

32 ANTI-CATHOLIC CIVILIZATION ESSENTIALLY NATURAL.

tional law into a confederacy of Christian powers ;
that is, in a word, Christendom, which contains not
only the spiritual order of the Church, but the natural
order of human society, with all its elements, and re-
lations of government, and material civilization.

Now the history of Christendom has three marked
periods : the first, in which it was nascent and slowly
arising towards its maturity ; the second, in which it
was mature ; the third, in which it gives tokens of
decay. In the first period society was not Christian,
and only yielded itself partially to the action of the
Church; in the second, it had become thoroughly
penetrated by the Church, and, though distinct and
without confusion, identical and coextensive with it;
so that Christian society may be said to be the
Church viewed in the natural order, and the Church
to be the Christian society viewed in the supernatural
order; in the third period, society has been gradually
withdrawing itself from the Church, and relapsing
into its original separation and independence of the
Faith and Christian law.

Now it is not my present purpose to treat of these
periods, nor to dwell upon the powers and laws by
which the Church regenerated and Christianized the
natural society of the world. It will be enough for
me to indicate the four chief agencies by which this

THE FOUR BASES OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 33

work was accomplished. First, by the law and Sacra-
ment of Christian Matrimony, its unity and indissolu-
bility, the fountain of all the sanctity and order of
domesticlife, and therootof political society ; secondly,
the unity of the Faith, which alone can generate unity
of private or public action ; thirdly, the unity of the
Church, which by its laws and its legislation unites
races into nations and nations into empires; and,
fourthly, the supreme authority of the Vicar of Jesus
Christ, the fountain and source of all unity, the last
and absolute arbiter of all debates : these four are, both
de jure and de facto, the four corner-stones of the
Christian society of the world. I must leave to others,
with more of leisure and of ability than myself, to
trace out what I have roughly suggested in the order
of history, of philosophy, and of faith; and also to
examine and to measure the bearings and defections
of this modern political order from these bases of its
Christian perfection. All I can do is to touch the out-
line of this subject in the example of England alone.
In order to do this more surely, I will first examine
the relations of England to Christianity and to the
Catholic Church, by which we shall be able to measure
its relations to the Christian society of Europe, which
is, as I have said, the offspring of Christianity and

of the Church.

3

34 ROME THE TEST OF FAITH.

1. Now, the relation of any body or people to the
Church or to the Faith may be measured by their
relations to its head. Their attitude towards Rome
will give the exact appreciation of their attitude
towards the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

They who devised and decreed the celebrated statute
of the twenty-fourth Henry the Eighth, by which
they claimed for the realm of England an imperial
character, an independence of all temporal authority,
and a self-sufficiency in all spiritual things, little
thought, we may well believe, of the legitimate and
inevitable consequences of their principles.

It is an inadequate and superficial conception of the
Anglican Reformation, to suppose that its chief labour
was to controvert certain particulars of Catholic Faith,
such as transubstantiation, invocation of Saints, and
purgatory. It consists formally in the rejection of
the Divine voice of the Church — in effacing from the
minds of the English people the whole idea of a visible
and divinely endowedChurch, with supernatural offices.
From this one master-error all the rest inevitably flow.

What a great English political writer said of France
during its first revolution, that it had " torn itself from
the family of nations and become the antagonist of all,"
may be with greater truth said of England under the
action of the Protestant Reformation. It rent itself

ISOLATION OF ENGLAND. 35

violently from the common wealth of Christendom, and
constituted itself upon a basis of temporal and spiritual
independence, at variance with the true interests of
Catholic and Christian nations. Three centuries have
been required to unfold all that lay hid in this act of
separation. The antagonism of England to the reli-
gious and political condition of Catholic nations has
become more and more formal and declared. In the
seventeenth century England and France represented
and led the two great arrays of the Protestant and
Catholic policy of Europe. But a Protestant policy,
properly so called, no longer exists. The progress of
indifferentism, incredulity, and revolution has swept
before it the narrow forms of Protestant policy. The
two only ultimate forms of thought and action are the
Catholic and the anti-Catholic — of which, if it can
hardly be said that France is the head of the former, it
may with truth be affirmed that England is the head
of the latter. The policy of uncatholic Russia is
Catholic by the side of the anti-Catholic policy of
England, which represents at this day not the partially
Christian political society of the original Protestant
Reformation, but the politics of the natural order,
divested not only of the Catholic, but also of the
Christian or supernatural character. But this I shall
hope to explain more fully hereafter.

36 ENGLAND WASTED BY

2. The first effect of the act by which England
separated itself from the Catholic unity was to set in
motion a principle of perpetual separation which has
never ceased to bear its fruit. The population of
England, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, was some-
where between three and four millions. Excepting
the remnant of Catholics still faithful to the Holy See,
the whole population was at least nominally and ex-
ternally contained within the one dominant Church,
established by Act of Parliament. At this day, with
a population of 20,000,000, not one half of the people,
by the latest statistical returns, is contained by the
Anglican Church. The principle of separation has
never ceased to work ; and the great schism from the
Catholic unity has been followed and punished by a
perpetual separation of individuals and of masses. It
is not necessary to narrate in detail the long line of
separations which have detached one half of the Eng-
lish people from the Protestant Church of England.

It will be enough to notice the chief sects which

O

have parted from its communion. The earliest, in the
time of Elizabeth, was a form of Calvinistic Presbyte-
rianism. The Presbyterians of England received great
support and augmentation of numbers and of force
from their contact with the Presbyterians of Scotland.
And this union it was which finally, in the reign of

PERPETUAL INTERNAL SCHISM. 37

Charles the First, overthrew the Episcopal Hierarchy
of the Church of England. Next in order, both of
ideas and of time, came the separation of the Inde-
pendents, who, retaining a belief in a Christian minis-
try, rejected altogether the union of ministers in a
common government, and taught that each several
minister and each several congregation constituted a
whole and perfect church in itself. After these fol-
lowed a crowd of sects which rejected the idea of a
Christian ministry, except as a human means of pre-
serving order. This is no more than the logical de-
velopment of the original rejection of the divine unity
and authority of the Church. The whole idea of a
Church, divinely founded asa kingdom or government,
with laws of unity and of authority binding the con-
science of men, was gradually effaced. Successively
and part by part, the whole system of the divine order
faded away, and new separations founded themselves
upon denials of the need of a Christian ministry, of
visible communion, of a Christian Hierarchy, as before
the Anglican Church had founded itself upon a denial
of the divine laws of Catholic unity and of the juris-
diction of the Holy See. It is not necessary to my pre-
sent purpose to mark the epochs of these separations.
It is enough to state upon the authority of a Protestant
and a separatist, that by the time of Charles the First,

38 SCHISM PUNISHED BY SCHISM,

not more than eighty years after the final establish-
ment of the Reformation, the sects of England
amounted to two hundred. The last two centuries
have added almost without number to the minor sects
of England of every form of fanatical pietism and
extravagance, until, as I have already said, eight or
ten millions, or one-half of the population, are lost to
the Anglican Church. On this statement I do not
dwell, as the purpose I have in view is rather the
logical and moral than the material development of
English Protestantism. My intention is chiefly to
show that in one half of the English people the idea
of a Church with divine endowments of unity and
authority is so perfectly effaced, that Christianity is
regarded only as a system of theism and of ethics,
and not as a supernatural order by which men are
united to God, and thereby aggregated into a divine
society. And more than this, there has been gene-
rated among English sectarians a strong spirit of
jealous opposition to the idea of a Church standing,
as they say, between God and the soul, and assuming
to direct the conscience and the will.

But, perhaps, it may be thought that the idea of a
Church with divine endowments to teach and govern,
if lost among the sectaries, is still preserved in the
Anglican Church ; that, if one half of the population

AND GENERATING HERESY. 39

have ceased to believe, or even to apprehend it, at
least the other half, which retains a Hierarchy and
fills the place of the Catholic Church in England,
must have retained it.

But this is not the fact. Of the half population still
adhering to the Anglican Church, the great mass are
only passively and nominally of its communion. They
have been born in it, or they are dependent upon it,
or those who have power over them, as the aristocracy
and richer families of the commons who possess estates
in land, require fidelity to the established religion as
a part of the duty of their dependents.

It is, perhaps, not easy to appreciate the state of
opinion in a body so fluctuating as the Anglican
Establishment. But it is certain that from its first
foundation episcopacy was accepted by it as a form of
government rather to be desired than as vital to the
Church. The lawfulness of episcopacy, rather than
its necessity; its convenience, rather than its divine
institution, was the position maintained even by those
who most strenuously contended for it. Such was the
state of opinion in the reign of Edward the Sixth, and
until the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth. While
the power of Catholic Spain was feared in England,
the English Protestants made common cause with the
Protestants of Germany and Switzerland. This period

40 INSTABILITY AND FLUCTUATION IN ALL,

ended with the destruction of the Spanish Armada ;
and immediately a new tendency developed itself,
and a new school was founded. From that time the
union with the foreign Protestants was relaxed, and
a hierarchical school began to teach the divine insti-
tution and necessity of Episcopacy. The founders of
this school were Hooker and Whitgift. It was con-
tinued by Andrews and Hall, and raised still higher
by Laud and Hammond. But if this form of opinion
grew up, another was also developed at its side, and
a long line of laxer divines, of whom some were
Anglican Bishops, laid more widely than ever the
foundations of the anti-hierarchical school which
endures to this day. Between these has sprung up,
since the year 1688, a school of latitudinarian opinions,
which teach that all external forms of Church govern-
ment are mutable and non-essential. Now, these
three schools are the chief which exist in the Anglican
Church on the subject of the nature, order, unity,
and authority of the Church. The great mass of its
people and the majority of its clergy, are either igno-
rant or indifferent upon this point ; passively living
on under the traditions in which they were born,
without so much as a formal or conscious intellectual
perception of the nature of a Church.

And of these three schools, two are definitely and

EXCEPT IN HOSTILITY TO THE CHURCH. 41

decidedly opposed to the true divine idea of the Visible
Church invested with the endowments of unity and
authority in teaching and government : so that the
opinion which teaches Apostolical Succession, Epis-
copacy, and a certain idea of Priesthood, without any
true or adequate idea of a Sacrifice, is that of a mere
school, respectable for the learning and piety of many
of its founders, but representing a very narrow section
of the Anglican Church.

Judging from the popular public opinion of the
English people, as manifested habitually and turbu-
lently in its daily flood of newspapers, in its innume-
rable publications, in its tide of public clamour, and its
perpetual private talk, it is within limits to say, that
the true and divine idea of the Church of God, as the
presence of Jesus teaching and reigning upon Earth,
not only has no existence in the mind of the English
people, but is known only to be rejected as a human
superstition or a spiritual tyranny. It is this which
has always given such a peculiar sharpness to all the
controversies and collisions between the English Pro-
testants and statesmen, and the Catholic and Roman
Church. There does not exist perhaps in the world a
population in which the spirit of hostility against the
unity of the Church has taken so deep and so wide-
spread a root. I do not except the United States of

42 PRODUCTION AND MULTIPLICATION

America, partly because the spirit of separation which
exists there is purely English in its origin, and partly
because in America the spirit of social and personal
tolerance is far more genuine and, I may say, more
generous than in England, where the traditions of
royal, national, aristocratical, family, and personal
pride and resentment against the Catholic Church
still sustain an active and high- wrought hostility to
its authority.

3. Thus far I have spoken only of the prolific
fertility of the Anglican Reformation in producing
endless separations from its own unity, if I may so
call it, and in thereby effacing the very notion of the
Church, as it forms an article of our Baptismal Creed,
and as it reigns by the authority of Jesus Christ over
the nations of the world. But there is another more
intimate and more vital development of error to be
noted, which for three hundred years has never
stayed its onward progress — I mean the genesis and
production of heresy in respect of the dogmas of
faith, and of unbelief, as the parasite of heresy.

It would be impossible at this time to do more than
to indicate broadly and in outline the successive and
accumulating phases of error which have manifested
themselves in the Anglican Church alone : for of the
sects in separation from it I shall not attempt to speak.

OF SUCCESSIVE AND SIMULTANEOUS HERESIES. 43

Now, I would mention only those manifestations of
error which have been important and permanent ; for
to trace out or to define the lesser developments would
be impossible. I would notice, then, a series of dis-
tinct schools of erroneous opinion progressively gene-
rated within the pale of the Anglican Church during
the last three centuries.

First, in the reign of Edward the Sixth the Anglican
Church was essentially Protestant. It was in close
alliance with the Reformers of Germany and Geneva.
If it had Bishops, it nevertheless admitted Presbyte-
rian ordinations. If it retained fragments of the
Missal, it pulled down all Tabernacles and Altars. If
it retained the administration of Sacraments, it did so
under protest, promulgating in its articles the Sacra-
mentarian doctrines of Calvin and Zuinglius,

In the reign of Elizabeth, as I have already said,
a hierarchical school sprung up, and with it a partial
re-action towards a sounder doctrine on the subject
of the grace of Sacraments. Sometimes, indeed, the
highest hierarchical pretensions and practices were
held in union with a Calvinistic doctrine on all other
points, as in Whitgift and Hall.

In the reign of Charles the First, the hierarchical
spirit led many into the study and admiration of the
Catholic Theology ; and in the midst of penal laws the

44 ENGLAND ESSENTIALLY LATITUDINARIAN

Church, by its secret and supernatural action, began
powerfully to affect many minds. There can be no
doubt that a reaction towards the Church partially de-
veloped itself. And while the Protestants of England
and Scotland called Rome Babylon, they called the
Anglican Church her eldest daughter. Popery and
Prelacy were identified. The Primacy of the Holy
See and the Episcopacy of the Anglican Church were
regarded as differing not in kind, but only in degree.
There can be no doubt that at that moment an exten-
sive change in favour of the Catholic Church spread
itself among the members of the Anglican body. This
is to be found in the works and lives of Laud, Ham-
mond, Forbes, Montague, Pearson, Thorndike, and
others, and extends itself through the commonwealth
and the reign of Charles the Second, until the Revo-
lution of 1688 under William the Third.

In the reign of William the Third, the Protestant re-
action from the Catholic influence of James the Second,
together with the Calvinism of Holland, laid the
foundations of the latitudinarian school, which in every
generation has become more numerous and powerful.
The essence of latitudinarianism is simple indifference
in matters of religion. The Episcopalians of England
and the Presbyterians of Scotland united under the
form of Established Churches to support the new

AND ANTI- SACRAMENTAL. 45

dynasty and each other. An extensive school of able
but worldly divines sprung up, whose religion con-
sisted in controversy against Catholicism and compre-
hension of all Protestant sects. Tillotson and Hoadley
— both accused of secret Socinianism — may be taken
as the two corner-stones of the system which has
become the prevalent religion of English laymen from
the Revolution of 1688 to this day. There can be no
doubt that if the majority of the Anglican clergy
hold a hierarchical and sacramental theology, the
vast majority of the laity reject both Hierarchy and
Sacraments, except as things tolerable and indifferent.
It is remarkable that the greatest blow dealt to this
pernicious system came from the hands of a Catholic
Bishop — that is from Dr. Milner, Vicar- Apostolic of
the Midland District in England — in a work called
Letters to a Prebendary, that is to a certain Balguy,
a disciple of Hoadley.

During the whole of the foregoing period, from the
Reformation downwards, two great tendencies were
at work in the Anglican Church — the one a tendency
to exaggerate the importance of the external forms of
worship and discipline ; the other, to concentrate itself
in an internal Pietism. There can be no doubt that
the so-called High Church or Hierarchical School has
hardly ever produced a writer of an interior spirit. If

46 ABSENCE OF INTERIOR SPIRIT.

we except Jeremy Taylor, who was hierarchical only
by accident, and really mutable, rhetorical, and latitu-
dinarian, there is hardly to be found among them a
devotional, ascetical, or mystical writer. On the other
hand, such writers abound among the so-called Low
Church or Puritan school: as, for instance, Hall,
Baxter, Owen, Leighton, Scrougall, and the like,
within the Anglican System, and a far greater number
among the dissenting sects. This seems to explain
the fact that the Hierarchical school has always been
dry and punctilious, and the Puritans or Pietist school
always disorderly and unconforming.

This opposition produced two schools — the one
formalistic, Arminian, semi-Pelagian, and verging on
Socinianism: the other Sacramentarian, Zuinglian,
and fanatical, issuing often in Antinomianism. The
end of the last century and the first thirty years of
this were spent in a conflict between these two
schools, in which the Pietistic or Puritan school,
under the name of Evangelical, gradually prevailed
more and more in imparting its character to the
popular religion of the Anglican Church.

Such was the state of the Reformed Church of
England down to the emancipation of the Catholics, or
until about the year 1830. From that time two new
and energetic intellectual movements developed them-

CATHOLIC REACTION ABROAD THE CAUSE 47

selves ; and two schools, which must extensively
affect the future relations of England to Christianity
and to the Catholic Church, were formed.

After three hundred years of penal laws, and fifty
years of unsuccessful conflict, the Catholics entered
into the political and social life of England, as the
early Christians emerged from the catacombs into the
light of the sun and the public streets of Rome. The
true and adequate cause of this emancipation is not to
be found in the will or power of any Government, nor
in the agitation or influence of any individual. It is to
be sought further off, and to be found in the far wider
movement which had swayed the continent by a reac-
tion from the impieties of the first French Revolution
towards the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church.
Another of the great reactions which have affected
the social order of Europe, as a law of its progress
since the schism of the sixteenth century, had set in,
and its influence powerfully supported and urged
forward the Catholic movement in Ireland and the
larger spirit of political justice in England.

The same cause produced in the Anglican Church,
and chiefly at Oxford, an intellectual movement so
well known that I should fear to enter into a descrip-
tion of it. Nevertheless, I may say that this intellec-
tual movement was in no way begun by the direct

48 OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL IN ENGLAND.

action of the Church, nor by Catholic preachers, or
theologians, or writers of any kind. It was not the
work of Catholic Priests in England, nor of Catholics
at all. It sprung up from causes remote from all these
agencies — causes hardly perceived at the time. The
effect, however, was most extensive. This school
created for itself a whole literature, secular and, so to
say, theological. It multiplied every form of secular
writings — History, Biography, Poetry, Romance, ar-
tistic and aBsthetical works. In theology, it translated
a Bibliotheca Patrum, wrote dogmatic treatises, con-
troversial arguments, commentaries on Scripture,
Ritualistic essays, and the like. It pushed its frontier
to the verge of the Catholic Church, and rested its
extreme position upon the Council of Trent. Such
was the Oxford movement, of which many reasons
warn me to refrain from saying more than that it
was a sincere, manly, and resolute endeavour to find
truth at all hazards, and to follow it at all costs.

The progress and development of this school im-
mediately began to throw out a reaction on the other
side. So early as the year 1835, at the outset of the
Oxford, or so-called Catholic movement in the Angli-
can Church, an opposition arose on the part of certain
men of high intellectual cultivation who had imbibed
the spirit and system of the German Rationalism.

THE "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS" ESSENTIALLY RATIONALISTIC. 49

This school was headed by Arnold, the intimate friend
of Bunsen. Gradually it has multiplied: chiefly
among his scholars in the two Universities of Oxford
and Cambridge, until finally it has expressed itself in
a volume of much notoriety, entitled " Essays and
Reviews." Of the tenets of this school I will give a
summary in the words of a document prepared with
much exactness by a committee appointed for the
purpose by the Anglican Convocation or Synod of
the so-called province of Canterbury.

" We have carefully examined the work, and we
consider the following to be its leading principles :

" I. That the present advanced knowledge pos-
sessed by the world in its manhood, is the standard
whereby the educated intellect of the individual
man, guided and governed by conscience, is to mea-
sure and determine the truth of the Bible.

" II. That when the Bible is assumed to be at vari-
ance with the conclusions of such educated intellect,
the Bible must be taken in such cases to have no
divine authority, but to be only a human utterance.

" III. That the principles of interpretation of the
Bible hitherto universally received in the Christian
Church are untenable, and that new principles of in-
terpretation must now be substituted, if the credit and
authority of the Holy Scriptures are to be maintained.

4

50 SUMMARY OF THE HERETICAL PRINCIPLES

" We find that in many parts of the volume state-
ments and doctrines of the Holy Scriptures are denied,
called into question, or disparaged, for example —

" 1. The verity of miracles, including the idea of
creation as presented to us by the Bible.

" 2. Predictive prophecy, especially predictions
concerning the Incarnation, person, and offices of
our Lord.

" 3. The descent of all mankind from Adam.

" 4. The fall of man and original sin.

(t 5. The divine command to sacrifice Isaac.

" 6. The Incarnation of our Lord.

" 7. Salvation through the Blood of Christ.

" 8. The Personality of the Holy Spirit.

" 9. Special and supernatural inspiration."

Again: a friendly reviewer gives this account of
the " Essays and Reviews :"

u No fair mind can close this volume without feel-
ing it to be at bottom in direct antagonism to the whole
system of popular belief. . . . The men and women
of our congregations are told that the whole scheme
of salvation has to be entirely rearranged and altered.
Divine reward and punishments, the fall, original
sin, vicarious penalty, and salvation by faith, are all,
in the rational sense of the terms, repudiated as im-
moral delusions. . All the bases of the Believer's

OF ANGLICAN RATIONALISM. 5 1

Creed are undermined, the whole external authority
on which it rests is swept away.

" In their ordinary, if not plain sense, these have
been discarded— the Word of God, the Creation, Re-
demption, Justification, Regeneration, Salvation, Mira-
cles, Inspiration, Prophecy, Heaven and Hell, Eternal
Punishment, a day of Judgment, Creeds, Liturgies,
Articles, the truth of Jewish History and Gospel
Narrative. A sense of doubt is thrown over even the
Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension, the Divinity
of the Second Person, the personality of the Third."

It is to be observed that these Essays, though pub-
lished in one volume, were not written in concert.
They therefore present a form of thought extensively
prevailing not only in the two Universities, but also
in England at large. Of the seven writers, all are
members of the Anglican Church ; six are ministers
holding office as professors, or other ecclesiastical and
academical trusts. In truth, the Rationalistic school
may be said to be thoroughly established in England.

Such then, " confitentibus ipsis," is the Rationalistic
school in the Church of England. But it is not a
mere school of thought, vague and floating, which
may be absorbed or dissipated. An authoritative pre-
liminary judgment has been pronounced upon it by
the highest Ecclesiastical tribunal, excepting only the

52 THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF ARCHES

Queen in Council. And that judgment, though in
some degree adverse to the liberty claimed by the
Rationalists, nevertheless gives to that school a sub-
stantive existence, and incorporates its principles by
public law in the system and rights of the Church of
England. Fifteen articles, containing highly heretical
matter, were exhibited by a certain Anglican Bishop
against Dr. Williams, one of the chief writers in the
" Essays and Reviews," before the Court of Arches:
twelve of those articles were dismissed, thereby either
directly or indirectly declaring that the matter of them
might with impunity be taught by the clergy of the
Church of England; three were declared to be at
variance with the formularies of the Establishment.
In the course of the judgment, certain first principles
were laid down which are more to our purpose than
the articles in question.

The learned judge declared in substance as follows :

1. That the Church of England holds the Books
of the Old and New Testament to be inspired and
Canonical.

2. That no one is at liberty to deny the inspiration
or canonicity of those books.

3. That the Church of England does not declare
what inspiration is, except that it signifies an inter-
position of God.

ALSO ESSENTIALLY RATIONALISTIC. 53

4. That it does not affirm all parts of the said
books to be so inspired.

5. That any clergyman may deny the inspiration
of any part of those books as long as he does not
deny the inspiration of any entire book. He may,
therefore, deny the inspiration of all of every book
except some residuum of each, so that the name of
the book be still retained in the Canon.

6. That what remains he may interpret as he
judges best, save only that he may not, by his inter-
pretations, contradict the articles and formularies of
the Church of England.

7. That these articles and formularies were in
many points left ambiguous, in order to permit
liberty and largeness of interpretation, of which
every one may avail himself as his conscience and
critical faculty may require.

Such is the judicial and authoritative interpre-
tation of the sixth article of the Church of England,
the first and productive principle of all protestant-
ism, namely, that Holy Scripture contains all things
necessary to salvation; and that those books are to
be accounted Canonical of which there was never
any doubt in the Church.

I need not stay to point out that this is pure and
essential Rationalism. The members of the Church

54 DR. COLENSO'S WORK PROTECTED BY

of England may reject or retain what they will, some
more and some less, of the Scriptures; but all that is
hereby rejected is rejected on the principle of Ration-
alism, i.e. of the critical reason : all that is retained is
retained upon the principle of Rationalism, that is,
of human testimony tried by the same criterion.
The individual is by necessity rationalistic in the use
of the liberty permitted to him ; and the Church of
England is equally rationalistic both in the principle
on which it permits that liberty, and in the position
it has assumed in the sixth article towards the Scrip-
tures and the Church. This judgment, therefore,
has an importance far beyond any that has yet been
given. It is far more rationalistic than the Essays
and Reviews; and it is more final and fatal in its
operations, inasmuch as it is not the wandering of
private individuals, but the authoritative promul-
gation of Rationalism as the basis of the Established
Religion by its highest ordinary tribunal in ecclesi-
astical matters. And not a voice, so far as I can
find, has been raised by any one of all the schools of
Anglican Protestantism against it.

Since the delivery of this judgment, a remarkable
illustration of its principles has been given by a work
on the Pentateuch, by Dr. Colenso, Anglican Bishop
of Natal, who in a laboured argument denies that the

THE LATE ECCLESIASTICAL JUDGMENT. 55

Books of Moses were written by Moses; and that the
Books themselves are of a historical character, that is,
are credible as a history. Dr. Colenso professes never-
theless a heartfelt belief in the revelations of the Old
and New Testaments, but rests his belief upon the
subjective convictions of his own spiritual conscious-
ness. I need not point out the essential rationalism
of this procedure ; and in noticing it, I desire to do so
with a sincere compassion towards those who, having
been tortured by the Protestant fiction of the suffici-
ency of Scripture, have fallen by recoil into a rational-
istic illuminism. God grant that he, and others like
him, may see that the perfect rationalism and the per-
fect illumination are to be found not in the private
reason or in the private spirit, but in the intelligence
of the universal Church, illuminated by the perpetual
indwelling and the light of the Holy Ghost.

I have thus summarily sketched out the chief forms
of religious opinions which have sprung up in the
Anglican Church in the three last centuries. Others
there are, as St. Augustine said of the lesser heresies,
"paene innumerabiles ;" but these are formal, per-
manent, and substantive schools of error: namely,
the Protestant, Hierarchical, Romanizing, Latitudin-
arian, Formalistic, Puritan, Oxford, and Rationalistic
Schools. These forms of religious opinion have been

56 HERESY CANNOT TAKE ROOT IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH,

gradually evolved from the darkness and chaos created
by the Anglican Reformation. Since that period the
Anglican Church has been in a state of perpetual
flux. Fixedness it has had none from the moment
of its separation, when it lost its inherence in the
universal Church by schism, and the influx of its
supernatural mind and divine guidance by formal
heresy. For, as I have said before, the master heresy
of the English race is to deny the presence of any
infallible authority upon earth.

During the eighteen centuries of its existence the
Catholic Church has been tried by the rise of a suc-
cession of heresies within its unity. Every century
has had its characteristic heresy. From Gnosticism to
Jansenism there is a line of almost unbroken succes-
sion in error which has sprung up parasitically by the
side of the Divine Truth. But the Church has re-
mained steadfast and resplendent, without change or
shadow of vicissitude, ever the same, and perfect in
its light as in the beginning. The errors of the
human intellect have never fastened upon the super-
natural intelligence of the mystical Body; but every
successive error has been expelled by the vital and
vigorous action of the infallible mind and voice of
the Church of God. All its dogma of faith remains
to this hour incorrupt, because incorruptible, and
therefore primitive and immutable.

NOR BE CAST OUT OF SCHISMATICAL BODIES. 57

The errors of men have been cast forth as humours,
which are developed in the human system, but can-
not coexist with the principle of life and health. A
living body easts off whatever assails its perfection.
" They went out from us, but they were not of us,
for if they had been of us, they would have con-
tinued with us, but that they might be manifest that
they were not all of us."*

But in the Anglican Church all is the reverse.
Every error which has sprung up in it adheres to it
still. Its doctrines vanish, its heresies abide. All its
morbid humours are absorbed into its blood. The
Lutheranism of Edward the Sixth ; the Hierarchical
Calvinism of Elizabeth ; the Ceremonial Arminianism
of James; the Episcopalian Antiquarianism of the
two Charleses ; the Latitudinarianism of William the
Third; the Formalism and the Fanaticism of the
Georges; the Anglo-Catholicism and the Rationalism
of the last thirty years, all coexist at this hour, side by
side, congested together, in open contradiction, and
almost perpetual controversy. It would be untrue to
represent any one of these schools of error as the legi-
timate voice or exponent of the Anglican Church.
They are all equally so, and all equally not so. They
each claim so^to be, and deny the legitimacy of all the
rest. But the Anglican Church pronounces no judg-
* I St. John, ii, 19.

58 THE IDEA OF A CHURCH LOST AMONG

ment among them. It sits mute and confounded. It
puts none of them out of its pale. None of them will
go out. All alike refuse to be put out. For all are
equally of it, and all, therefore, by the inspired rule,
alike remain with it. And this for the obvious reason
already given, which to any Catholic is intuitively
clear: forasmuch as the Anglican Reformation has
entirely cancelled from the intelligence of the English
people the whole idea of the Church divinely founded,
endowed with supernatural attributes, and teaching
with divine, and, therefore, infallible certainty, there
is neither any principle of authority, or test of cer-
tainty by which to discern truth from error, nor any
frontier or circle of unity from whuili error should be
expelled. I believe the universal experience of all
those who have exercised the evangelical ministry in
England would be this, that the last article of the
Creed, which enters, and that slowly, and for a long
time painfully, into the English intelligence, is the
nature and office of the Church : or to speak theologi-
cally, the formal object of Faith, and the divinely
ordained conditions of its manifestations to the world.
I will make but one further reflection, and then
draw a general conclusion as to the present relations
of England to Christianity and to the Catholic Church,
and therefore to the Christian Society of the world.

ALL SECTIONS OF ENGLISH PROTESTANTS. 59

The reflection is this: — The direct occasion of the
departure of England from the doctrines of Faith was
collision with the Catholic Church and with the Holy
See. Three times England has contended with the
Vicar of Jesus Christ, and three times it has suffered
loss, each greater than the last. The schism of Henry
the Eighth was on no point of doctrine. The dogma
of faith remained unchanged till after his death, and
he was buried amidst the solemnities of the Catholic
Dirge and Requiem. It was the spirit of rationalism,
and the jealousy of the Crown, which begun the con-
flict. After this came the result: and the peculiar
aberrations of the Anglican Protestantism were the
immediate consequences.

Again, in the time of Elizabeth, by cruel persecu-
tion and by shedding the blood of the Saints, Eng-
land sinned against the Church of God, and the first
germs of its own internal schisms began immediately
to spring up.

A third time, in the reign of James the Second,
the English people and their Rulers contended with
the Holy See, and by recoil fell into Latitudinarian
Protestantism.

We live in the period of another collision, and of
another recoil ; but as yet perhaps neither the colli-
sion nor the recoil have reached their limits.

60 ROME OR RATIONALISM, THE ONLY

A few years ago the Sovereign Pontiff restored to
England the Catholic Hierarchy, and the Rulers
stirred up many classes of the people to a momentary
madness of fear and of resentment. The time is too
recent and the event too well known that I should
need to dwell upon them now. But it is remarkable
that at this moment a recoil the most pronounced, for-
midable, and reasoned, as well as the most extensive,
and extending towards rationalistic unbelief, which
has ever been known in England since the reformation
has developed itself. It must not be indeed supposed
that rationalism did not already exist in the Anglican
Church. The germs of it were deep in its original
foundation, and had widely, but informally spread
themselves. All that is new at this time is its syste-
matic expression, and its logical relation to the state of
religious belief in England. There can be no doubt
that the controversies of the last thirty years have re-
solved the question of religious belief for all intelligent
minds in this country into its ultimate analysis. It is
a simple question between Rome and rationalism, be-
tween the divine certainty of faith, and the instability
of human opinion : between the presence of a Divine
Teacher and the solitude and darkness of the human
soul. They who have watched the development of
the religious intellect, so to speak, of the English peo-

ALTERNATIVE FOR THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 61

pie, in the last years, can^fix with certainty upon the
period when this alternative became a public and prac-
tical question : and they have noted the immediate
reaction which threw itself back in the direction of
German criticism, as the only assignable reason for not
submitting to the Catholic Church. Many who are now
prominent in the anti-catholic movement in England,
especially in public life, were once on its frontier, and,
parted from their former colleagues and convictions,
actually on the threshold of its unity, I may say ad
limini apostolorum. We are always tempted to think
the time in which we live to be eventful and pregnant
beyond other ages. But I think we shall not be far
wrong in considering as exceptionally great the thirty
years which began with Catholic Emancipation in
England, including the restoration of the Catholic
Episcopate and terminating in the an ti- Christian move-
ment of the nations against the Temporal Sovereignty
of the Holy See. In this period there has been a pro-
nounced and explicit development of the two intel-
lectual movements indicated above. There was a time
when those who now stand opposed as Catholics and
• Rationalists were apparently in close and perfect iden-
tity of convictions. But even then, under the form of
a common opinion, there lay concealed the essential
antagonism of two principles, the divergence of which

62 THE FOUR COLLISIONS OF ENGLAND

is as wide as Divine Faith and human opinion can in-
terpose between the minds of men. While every year
has confirmed to some the reasons which, with lumi-
nous evidence, convert the convictions of the intellect
into the consciousness of faith, and has revealed more
and more the divine unity and endowments of the
only Church of God, others once by their side have
been carried back, as by a ground swell, into Anglican-
ism, Protestantism, Latitudinarianism, and Rational-
istic Deism. Such has been their recoil from collision
with the Church of the living God, and such have
been already the oscillations, and the descending
reactions of England in its three hundred years of con-
tention with the Holy See. "Durum est contra stimu-
lum calcitrare." " It is hard to kick against the goad."*
If, as I have said, the four bases of Christian society
be the Christian law of matrimony, the unity of faith,
the unity of the Church, and the supreme authority of
the Vicar of Jesus Christ, then enough has been said
to show that England has removed its civil polity
from the foundations of the Christian law to the basis
of mere natural society. By its original sin of royal
and national pride, it threw off its obedience to the
Vicar of Christ, and, by inevitable consequence, vio-
lated the unity of the Church and of the faith. And
Acts, ix, 5.

WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. THE ENGLISH 63

now, in these last days, it has violated the unity and
indissolubility of Christian marriage by legalising
divorce, thereby dissolving the primary foundation-
stone of the Christian society, laid by the Church of
God in England. It has needed many generations
to unfold what lay hid in the original separation of
Henry the Eighth. It may take generations to un-
fold all that lies hid in the existence of the Divorce
Court. But time, though slowly, works surely.

" Fecunda culpse secula nuptias
Primum inquinavere et genus et domus ;
Hoc fonte derivata clades,
In patriam populumque fluxit."

JHorat., Od. Lib. iii, 6.

Lastly, of the relation of England to the Christian
Society of Europe, that is, of the Foreign Policy of
the English Government towards Christianity and the
Catholic Church, what can I say ? Out of traditional
hatred of the Holy See, the hatred which springs from
wrong, " odisse quern lasseris," the English Govern-
ment has placed itself at this time at the head, not of
the Protestant policy of Europe as in other days, but
of the anti-catholic revolution of the world. It does
not lead on the formal errors of Lutheranism or of
Anglicanism, but the principles of heresy and of
anarchy. It has headed the unbelief and the sedition
of Europe. It is the intrinsic enmity of the congeries

64 GOVERNMENT THE HEAD OF ANTI CATHOLIC REVOLUTION.

of heresies within the Anglican Church which chiefly
directs the political power of England against the
Catholic Church, and above all against the Holy See.
But the Government of England represents not the
Anglican Church alone: it represents also the whole
mass and waste of fanaticism, indifference, and un-
belief which reigns over one-half of the English people.
This great power of the national will drives every
government in the same path. No man can withstand
or direct it. All must obey it, as if all were carried
onward by an irresistible tide. And, as I have already
pointed out, the very idea of the Church divinely
organised and endowed with a supernatural office being
effaced from the intelligence of the English people,
the policy of the Government is, by its own nature and
instinct, hostile to the Catholic Church, and therefore
to the Christian Society of Europe. At this moment
it stands alone in the world, isolated from all Catholic
nations, because it is anti-Catholic, and from all con-
stituted governments, because it is the stimulus and the
head of revolutionary movements in every people.

The principle of non-intervention is nothing more
than the enunciation of the principle of national inde-
pendence, which, as I have shown, was the first step of
Henry the Eighth in the way of schism. Let me sup-
pose this principle to be admissable in the sphere of

POLICY OF ENGLAND DESTRUCTIVE TO CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 65

pure politics. Its application to the question of the
unity of the faith and of the Church, or of the Sove-
reignty or the Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus
Christ which now agitates the world, is essentially a
denial of the divine institution of the Church . To such
a government as that of England, which represents a
population not only in schism and in heresy, but tradi-
tionally hostile to the spiritual authority of the Church
and of the Pontiffs, it is frank and logical to let loose
every agency, and to stimulate every agitation which
can undermine the Temporal Power of the Holy See.
Having no perception of the nature of the Church,
even as a spiritual kingdom, and hating its supreme
authority, nothing can be more consequent, or con-
gruous for the English Government than to endeavour
to make Rome the capital of an united Italy. It is a
pure and consistent anti-catholic policy. Any govern-
ment which proclaims the principle of non-inter-
vention in the Roman question, thereby denies the
divine authority of the Church and of the Holy
See, and its divine mission to the nations of the
world. All this the English Government denies by
the original hypothesis of the so-called Reformation.
It is Lutheranism in politics and the Reformation in
diplomacy. As the Government of England repre-
sents merely natural society, — that is, civil power

5

66 NON-INTERVENTION A DENIAL OF THE DIVINE ORDER OF THE

divested of the character of religion, and without the
guidance of the divine authority of the Church, — it is
inevitable that it should be in diametrical opposition
to all governments which, being Christian and Ca-
tholic, recognise their duty to sustain, by active power,
the Catholic Faith, the Catholic Church, and the pre-
rogatives of the Holy See. To this simple issue all
the foreign policy of the day is resolving itself. In its
last analysis it is the conflict of the Christian and the
Natural Societies. Neither France nor any Catholic
people can accept the principle of non-intervention,
when the Faith, or the Church, or the Patrimony or
the Sovereignty of the Church, are at stake; they would
fall from their Catholic and Christian character in the
act of adopting such a policy. To invite them so to
do is an offence against their deepest and highest
sense of duty. England proclaims such a policy be-
cause it is not Catholic, and because its Government
acts as if it had no relations to Christianity ; and, in pro-
claiming this principle, it assumes an attitude towards
Christianity and the Church, and towards the Chris-
tian Society of Europe, which gives to it at this
moment the melancholy preeminence of being the
most anti-catholic, and therefore, if not in its inten-
tions, certainly in its influences and in its results, the
most anti- Christian power of the world.

CHURCH. ENGLAND PERPETUALLY DEPARTING FURTHER 67

Of the relations of the Anglican Church to Chris-
tianity and to the Catholic Church, enough has been
already said. It is evident that the perpetual flux
and change which has developed in these three centu-
ries so many heresies, is perpetually resolving the
Anglican Church into the two only tenable forms of
religious opinion and belief, — rationalism and faith.
The departure of the Anglican body further and
further from all primitive doctrines, and from the very
idea of divine certainty in matters of belief, has be-
come greater in every successive century, and, as we
have seen, with every successive collision with the
Church of God. Whatsoever be the partial re-
action of opinion in individuals or fragments of the
Anglican body towards a more positive faith, I can-
not note in the body as such, any tendency but one
of further departure from unity, and of a lower
descent in unbelief.

As to the several classes of the people, the same
must be said. In the higher class there has been in
every century and every generation a great and con-
tinual loss to the Catholic Church. In the beginning
of the last century nearly a fifth of the Peers of
England were Catholics ; now they are hardly more
than a dozen among three or four hundred. In
the counties of England a large proportion of the

68 FROM CHRISTIANITY. REACTION TOWARDS FAITH PARTIAL.

landed proprietors were Catholics, now but few
remain.

In the middle class, which represents especially the
commercial, parliamentary, and protestant spirit of
England, Catholics are hardly to be found.

Among the learned classes the proportion is hardly
greater, and, if greater, only because the numbers of
those classes are so much less.

I may then be asked: If this be so, what remains
for England? Are all the hopes with which Catho-
lics have consoled and cheered themselves of a work
of grace in England without foundation?

By no means. There are many and great en-
couragements to the largest and most sanguine
hopes ; such hopes as Christians and Catholics alone
know how to cherish, because they alone know the
power and the love of God.

First, it must be said, that the work of conversion
which, down to the beginning of this century, was rare,
and sporadic, and at most in the smallest number, has
now, in these last thirty years, become very frequent,
numerous, and systematic. It is not now the work of
an individual here and there, but of the Church, as a
body, working by its action upon the English people.

Next, conversions to the faith have been from every
class. There is no grade, or condition of public, or

TRADITION OF PENAL LAWS DYING OUT. 69

private life, no profession, no art, no science, no de-
gree of intellectual cultivation, which has not made its
contribution to the Church. The gift of faith has
fallen upon men of every kind, but chiefly upon the
learned professions: upon Anglican ministers, lawyers,
physicians, and students of the two Universities, and
upon those who fill many offices of public trust and im-
portance. And these again become centres of influ-
ence to the classes or professions to which they belong,
and in almost every instance their example, or their
instructions bring others to the faith.

Again, a great change has passed upon the public
opinion of England on the subject of Protestanism.
It has, by a series of internal conflicts and self-contra-
dictions, extensively lost the confidence and respect of
educated nen. The defiant and self-lauding tone of
the last generation is now seldom heard. The
rationalistic excesses of Germany have very deeply dis-
credited the Protestant Reformation, and the glaring
inconsistencies of the Anglican system have reduced
its members to a tone of apology unknown before.

Moreover, later writers, impartial, though Protes-
tant, both in England and abroad, have exposed the
true history oi the Reformers and the Reformation,
to such an ext?nt as to make many of a better and
higher mind unwilling to call themselves Protestants.

70 PROTESTANTISM NO LONGER BOASTFUL BUT ON THE DEFENSIVE.

Also, the Protestant controversy has undergone a
great modification. Instead of the contemptuous and
confident tone of other days, it is timid and full of
concessions, excepting in the fanatical Protestants, to
whom few educated people pay attention or show any
respect. The anti-catholic argument is, in Theology
at least, sensibly weaker, and narrowed to fewer
points, and now so seldom heard, compared with
other times, that it is, as a public voice, almost silent.

The so-called Anglo- Catholic movement hjis for
years defended many points of Catholic trufn, not
fully, indeed, but approximately, so that a great part
of the Protestant controversy is turned aside Jrom the
Church, and spends itself upon its own adherents.

And further, the Catholic literature ani the Ca-
tholic argument is in the hands of multi/udes who
before never could, or never would, listen to the
truth. In societv it has become a common topic, so
wide spread and so habitual, that it mar be said to
pervade the conversation of the educated classes.
Much of this is, of course, hostile to /the Church;
nevertheless, it is discussed as a comnron and even
prominent subject in the upper classes i>f England.

Another point in which society ii England is
greatly modified towards the Churoi is this: The
race of men who maintained the yenal laws, and

JUSTER SPIRIT OF ENGLISHMEN. 7 1

breathed their spirit, is nearly passed away. Their
sons, who were either born, or brought up after the
repeal of the penal laws, are now the fathers and
leads of this generation. They are, as a rule, men
rf a larger, juster, calmer, and more equitable mind.
T\ey will themselves both listen to the truth, and
me-e readily allow their children to do so. By the
san> cause, their children will probably be even more
justmd large than themselves; and the next genera-
tion iay be indefinitely emancipated from the anti-
cathoc prejudices and falsehoods of their fathers.

Als* Catholics are to be found in so many fami-
lies, tit it is no longer possible to keep up the
absurd strangement and affected separation between
Protests ts and Catholics as in other times. They are
obliged -> receive their Catholic kinsmen, and, at
least, to >.t and drink with them.

All the particulars might be more fully de-
veloped, b, what I have said will suffice.

There rtiains, however, one other, and that the
greatest cae of hope.

I have hierto spoken of the organised social and
political lifef England. I am afraid that it is fur-
ther removecrom Christianity and from the Church
than at any jvious time in its history. The whole
weight of Enind in the world is secular and anti-

72 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE ROBBED OF THEIR

catholic. It represents mere natural society, with its
indocility and insubordination to revelation and to
divine authority, and its proud vindication of liberty
of thought, of speech, and of action, both in indi/
victuals and in nations. Individualism in religion
and nationalism in politics, are the two cardi^l
points of its existence.

There remains, however, one more element in/>ur
subject, — the English people; the unorganised^ fe,
so to speak, of its millions, " Israel scattered/ipon
the mountains, as sheep having no shepherq* I
trust I shall find pardon if I manifest too grea& love
for the people of my own race, u my brethren>ccord-
ing to the flesh."t The Anglican Reformaon was
the sin of the Rulers, not of the people ; of thf'astors,
not of the flock. It was not until after lon^ears of
force, and fraud, and unrelenting cruel ty/>f perse-
cution unto death, with frequent but fruips armed
risings in defence of their faith, that f poor of
England fell under the power of their mas^s. They
were robbed of their faith, and separafr from the
Church of God by conquest; and tl** children
have been born into the ruin of theijnheritance,
and are in schism by no conscious, nWless by any
perverse election of their will. The Cities of the

* II Chron., xviii, 16. t 4> ix> 3<

FAITH BY THE REFORMATION, 73

Anglo-Saxon race are in them still; the same docile,
childlike, perhaps slow, intelligence; the same firm,
tenacious, and fearless will; the same love of truth,
and of justice, of fair dealing, and of uprightness in
word and deed. If our great St. Gregory could once
more walk through the place of their captivity, he
would recognize the countenances of his children's
children. The fluctuations, recoils, reactions, heresies,
controversies, and fanaticisms which have desolated
other Protestant countries, such as Germany and
Switzerland, and also, to no small degree, the edu-
cated classes of England, have passed almost unfelt
over the millions of the English people. It is said
that the greatest tempest does not stir the waters of
the sea below the level of certain feet from its sur-
face. All above is in violent agitation, while all
benea this still and tranquil, as from the beginning
of the creation. So it is with the great living,
breathing, beating, and, I may say, noble human
heart of the English, the Anglo-Saxon people. The
life of the northern races is in them : a profound sense
of an unseen world: of God as their Creator, the
witness of all their actions, and their just Judge at
last. Upon this also the Catholic Church has built what
three hundred years of schism and heresy had never
overthrown, —a belief in Christianity as a divine reve-

74 AND NEVER FORMALLY HERETICAL.

lation, and in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
There is in the mouths of the English poor a saying,
the origin of which I could never trace. But it seems
" volitare per ora virorum," like a sybilline oracle, or,
more truly, like the proverbial instinct of a race ones
Catholic. It is " like the sound of one going in the
tops of the pear trees,"* — the sign of the Lord's advent,
presence, and future manifestation. They habitually
say, u The Catholic religion was the first religion, and
it will be the last." There floats among them the tra-
ditionary expectation, that the faith of their fathers
will one day rise again ; and, though they have been
taught to hate it and to fear it, nevertheless they look
for it, with no alarm at least for the bearing of the
prophecy upon the destinies of the Anglican Establish-
ment, which they neither believe in, nor love.

It may be that, as the Norman Conquest imposed
for centuries upon Saxon England the Norman lan-
guage and the Norman laws, which all have been
swallowed up and overwhelmed, as a stone in the
sands, by the rising and return of the Saxon spirit,
the Saxon language, and the Saxon race, so, in like
manner, the oligarchical religion of the English Crown
and Aristocracy may be absorbed and buried in the
rising again of the popular faith of the Saxon people

* II Kings, v, 24.

THE CHRISTIAN BELIEF OF ENGLAND MATERIALLY CATHOLIC, 75

of England. Be this as it may, certain it is that in no
class of the English population are the Catholic faithful
or the Catholic Priest more truly respected and loved.
The poor of England have much ignorance and many
strange errors as to the Catholic faith, sedulously pro-
pagated in the last three centuries by those who live
by contending with the Church and dividing its spoils.
But they have no class prejudices, no fanatical contro-
versy, no pharisaical religion, no worldly respects or
fears to blind their eyes, or to pervert their will. They
are both willing and resolute in seeing with their own
eyes and hearing with their own ears, and in judging
of men as they find them, and of listening calmly to
what they teach, and in accepting it if they believe it,
and in defending it if it be persecuted, from a mere
love of fair play and of a generous sympathy with
those who are weak and with those who suffer. The
progress of the Church among them is vast and limited
only by the narrowness of our means, umessis quidern
multa operarii autem pauci,"* may be said indeed of
England; and of its poor, " regiones albae sunt ad
messem."f There is no more beautiful vision in the
natural order than the woodlands, and the cornlands,
and the downs, and the hamlets, and the villages of
England, with their simple poor, and the homes and the
* -St. Matt., ix, 37. f St. John, iv, 35.

76 SURVIVING THE REFORMATION, AND

works of men. And surely the Lord of the Prophet,
who had pity upon Ninive for the sake of its poor
and its innocent and its oxen, will have pity upon
them. And He who had compassion on the multitude
because they had been with Him three days and had
nothing to eat, will one day let fall the Bread of Life
in abundance round about their dwellings in the

o

wilderness. It is upon this broad base that the Ca-
tholic Church in England must hereafter repose. The
Reformation, with all its traditions, ecclesiastical, reli-
gious, political, and social, its class interests, and its
class prejudices, as a religion, is dying out, and must
die out; and in its death will give birth to the indiffer-
entism and incredulity which has been already gene-
rated by the great revolt of the sixteenth century in
every Protestant country. But the masses of the
English people are still the " apta materia" for the
action of the Catholic Church, of its divine voice in
teaching, and of its seven Sacraments of life, order,
and of sanctity. And for this reason it is that the res-
toration of the Hierarchy was cheaply purchased at
the cost of all the Papal Aggression tumult. It would
have been cheaply purchased at the cost of seven such
confusions. It was the restoration to the Saxon race
of the supernatural form of the Kingdom of God, which
once before, through the Hierarchy of St. Gregory

PREPARING FOR A RESTORATION TO THE FAITH. 77

the Great, had created Saxon England from the rudi-
ments of its disorder to be a Christian Church and a
Catholic monarchy. It is not wonderful that the anti-
catholic spirit should have rent and tormented Eng-
land, when the shadow of the Divine presence fell
upon it. The clamour and uproar did no more than
publish to every soul of man within the realm that
the Church of God summoned them to submission.
Instead, then, of wishing that so great a Pontifical
act had been carried through in silence, or by a carnal
and stealthy prudence, we may rejoice that it was riot
" done in a corner," or brought in privily and un-
awares. Its magnitude demanded a proportionate
promulgation, and its claim upon the consciences of
men required a publication which should render the
plea of ignorance impossible. In the last twelve years
the Catholic Church in England has closed with the
population, and entered into every rank, class, and
degree of its social life ; and, though the number of
the souls gathered into its unity be great every year,
the true growth and progress of the Church is not
in the number of its conversions. Many as they are,
what are they upon a population of twenty millions ?
The true growth and development of the Church is to
be found in its own restored and expanding organiza-
tion ; in the multiplication of its priesthood and religious

78 ROME MORE DIRECTLY POWERFUL IN ENGLAND

orders; in the increase of every form of religious
charity and activity; in the rising culture of its edu-
cation in every class ; above all, in the influx of the
mind, order, power, and energy of the Catholic
Church, and chiefly of the Holy See, throughout the
whole structure and extent of its ecclesiastical life
and system. For it. may be said with truth, that
the Catholic Church in England, at, this moment, is
rather a new creation from the Holy See, as in the
time of St. Gregory the Great, than the continuity
and development of an ancient body. The ancient
Church in England withered up and perished by
nationalism, and the destroyer cut it down, and cast
it into the fire. The Catholic Church of this hour
springs anew from the side of the Vicar of Jesus
Christ, and gives to the Sovereign Pontiff, in Eng-
land, what the Count de Maistre expressed in one of
his true and brilliant analogies, a Real Presence
throughout its unity. Catholic England fell by ceas-
ing to be Roman, and has risen again by the return
and expansion of the life, mind, power, instincts, and
action of the Holy See.

One thing is certain. The action of the Holy See
upon England is more powerful at this day than it has
been at any time since the Reformation, not only by
the development of the Catholic Church, which, in

NOW THAN EVER SINCE THE SCHISM, 79

these thirty years, is beyond all expectation great, nor
only by the restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy and
Order, but by the closer union of the life of the
Catholic Church in England with the Holy See,
and by its wide-spread influence upon the whole
population of the land, by reason of the conflict which
is now waging, in pretext against the Temporal
Power, but in reality against the Spiritual Power
of Rome. All the nations of Europe are con-
strained to take part in this contest. Some of conten-
tion, and some of good will. The English people are
compelled to hear the subject daily discussed. Many
go further and further into the anti-catholic policy ;
but many are staggered, and shaken, and many are
revising their former opinions and retracting their
former words. There is no doubt that the authority of
Rome, like that of our Lord, who was " crucified in
weakness, but raised in power," is every year greater
upon the intelligence, conscience, and heart of the na-
tions of Europe. The providential institution, design ,
and preservation of the Temporal Power is manifested
and believed in now as it was not even in 1848; and
the nations which now for a time seem fluctuating and
passive, may resume their former fidelity and courage.
" Sanabiles fecit nationes super terrain," — and after
a period of disease they may return to their pristine

80 FUTURE OF ENGLAND LOWER BEFORE IT IS RAISED AGAIN.

health. The anti-catholic policy of the moment may,
at any day, disappear in the nations which retain
their union with the Catholic Church ; and England
may find itself in the religious and political isolation,
which its greatest man in these days, the late Duke
of Wellington, foretold would be its last and gravest
danger. Probably its conduct towards the Holy See
may be the cause of a reaction against it, which will
be all the more complete as it will be the more visibly
deserved. When the Catholic nations of Europe
return to the traditional policy of Christendom,
England will stand alone, ostracised by its own anti-
catholic spirit and character.

Such, then, appear to be the relations of England
to Christianity and to the Catholic Church.

The relations of the Crown, the Government, the
Legislature, the organized political life, the dominant
public opinion, is anti-catholic and anarchical: to a
great extent it is anti-christian, and destructive of
the Christian and Catholic Society of Europe. This
evil tendency, increasing steadily and perpetually from
the so-called Reformation, is, we may fear, stronger at
this day than ever. Except by a miracle of Provi-
dence, it must certainly run to lengths, of which all
we now see is no more than the beginning. Nothing,
I fear, but greater excesses can be looked for from it.

FRAGMENTARY RELIGIONS PASSING AWAY. 81

The same must be said, with modifications, of the
Anglican Church, and of all classes of the English
people as such.

I see no appreciable reaction towards either Christi-
anity or the Catholic Church sufficient to counter-
balance the visible and vast development of the spirit
of rationalism and of religious anarchy. But as these
antagonists dissolve themselves, the Church advances,
always expanding its majestic unity, and these two
operations never cease in their activity. The true and
living relations seem to exist chiefly between indivi-
duals, "homines bonae voluntatis" of every class, and
the great mass of the simple people. In preparation of
heart they believe in Christianity and in the Catholic
Church. Explicitly they know little, but implicitly
they submit to the whole revelation of God. Over
such it is that the restored Catholic Church of Eng-
land is now extending its renewing influences, and it
may be that the Hierarchy of Pius the Ninth may
have a future in England as the Catholic Church in
Arian Spain and Arian Lombardy, which, after cen-
turies of eclipse, came forth again in a renewed and a
mightier splendour, and has filled the Catholic world
with its greater light even to this day.

Hitherto I have spoken only as the signs of the
sky and of the times betoken. I have treated, as

6

82 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ALONE

far as I could, in the order of history, and in the in-
dications which mark the tides and the currents of
human action, the evidences of what may be in store
for England hereafter. But there is a power and a
will above all these which renders to us no account of
its intentions, and alone disposes all. We must adore
it in silence, and yet we may not in silence pass over
its presence and its part in such a theme as this. There
was a time when the conversion of Rome was humanly
as hopeless as the conversion of England, Yet it was
done ; and it was done, not by the slow accretion of
individuals, as men build palaces or pyramids, but by
an instantaneous act of power, as God laid the founda-
tion of the Earth and rears the height of mountains.
What more unlocked for than the decree which, all in
one day, hung upon the columns of the Forum —
" Christianam religionem profiteri liberum." And
how wonderful and almost instantaneous, like a beau-
tiful vision, was the rise and the world- wide expan-
sion of the peace and glory of Pontifical Rome, the
mother and mistress of all churches. So, in its pro-
portion, there may also be a grace in store for Eng-
land. For the blood of martyrs is not shed in vain,
nor are the tears and prayers of widows and orphans,
virgins and confessors, forgotten before the Throne.
A great and mighty intercession has been for centu-

EXPANDING TOWARDS A FUTURE. 83

ries ascending for England. The times of its desola-
tion will not last for ever, nor has God forgotten to
show mercy. The loss of its worldly splendour, by
which it is now inflated and intoxicated, may, per-
haps, be required as the price of its restoration. For,
as it lost its true Christian glories by the growth of
its worldly greatness, so, perhaps, a worldly humilia-
tion may be the just divine condition to its rising
again to the grace of the Kingdom of God. But this
may come as in one day when we least look for it,
and in one day it may turn to the Lord a when the
veil shall be taken away"* from its heart.

* II Cor., iii, 16.

I.

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED
GREATEST.

PREACHED IN THE FIRST SYNOD OF WESTMINSTER,

1862.

TO

THE FATHERS OF THE SYNOD OF OSCOTT,

AND TO THE CLERGY, REGULAR AND SECULAR,

THERE ASSISTING,

us Sermon

IS HUMBLY INSCRIBED

BY THEIR FAITHFUL SERVANT IN CHRIST,

H. E. M.

Feast of S. Edward, King and Cvnfes&or,
1862. *

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED
GEEATEST.

" I have compassion on the multitude ; for, behold, they have now
been with me three days, and have nothing to eat." — St. Mark,
viii, )*. >»

THE miracle we have read in the Gospel of to-day sets
before us a special manifestation of the watchful and
tender pity of our divine Lord. God and Man Him-
self, He knew, both by divine intuition and by human
experience, the burden of our infirmity. No suffering
or sorrow was strange to Him. He had a sympathy
and a consolation for all. His divine love was ever
in motion through the affections of our nature to
heal and strengthen. He too had tasted hunger in
the desert: " When He had fasted forty days and
forty nights, afterwards He was hungry," It was
out of the fulness of His own personal knowledge
that He said, "I have compassion on the multitude."
At the time when He spoke these words He stood
in the wilderness surrounded by the people who
thronged upon His steps: "There was a great multi-
tude" gathered from all around. While they saw His

88 HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST.

miracles and listened to His words, they forgot them-
selves. Day by day they followed on, further and
further from their homes. They were too eager
in pursuit to remember either want of food or length
of way. Some great desire for they knew not what
drew them after Him ; some craving mightier than
hunger was upon them. " They have now been with
Me three days" — how great their perseverance! —
"and have nothing to eat:" and "some came from
far:" distance no more than hunger or time turned
them back. " If I send them away fasting to their
home, they will faint by the way."

You know the rest: how the Lord blessed and gave
the fishes and the loaves, and multiplied their sub-
stance. "They did eat and were filled : and they took
up that which was left of the fragments, seven baskets.
And they that had eaten were about four thousand."
Their perseverance had its great reward. They had
followed One who was almighty, and with Him they
could lack nothing. God was with them in the wil-
derness: they pressed upon the Divine Presence,
though they knew it not. The Omnipotence by which
the world was made was with them ; and in the hands
of the Word made Flesh the creatures multiplied even
as they were created. " He spake the word, and it
was done." The seven loaves had neither stint nor

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 89

measure but the will and power of Him who blessed
and brake them. Four thousand were filled, and
seven baskets yet remained.

What have we here but the shadowing forth of
some deeper mysteries ? Though the scene lies in the
common course of our Lord's earthly life, yet all His
words and works are charged with a prof ounder mean-
ing. The Son of Man in the wilderness, a fainting
multitude, a miracle of compassion on their natural
hunger, — this we see before us. But there are here
greater things than these. The natural order passes
into the supernatural, and the whole becomes a symbol
and a parable of the Kingdom of Grace. Jesus, the
disciples, and the multitude, set forth to us the new
creation of God, the Head and the Body; the Church
ministering and ministered unto ; the whole continuous
dispensation of Grace, its fountain and its channels ;
its sacramental action, its manifold unity of elements,
earthly and heavenly, human and divine.

This miracle, then, has many lessons for our instruc-
tion and encouragement. ^^

First, it is a divine pledge to us that fhe compassion

of the Son of God is ever upon His Church.

* From the throne of His glory He watches over the

multitude who still follow Him in the wilderness of

this evil world. The whole Church throughout all

90 HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST.

the earth is before His gaze ; and the sufferings and
sorrows of every soul are present to His care. The

yu^tp

Saet'ocl .Hoart o£ Jesus has not withdrawn lie com-
passion with His visible presence. It is enthroned at
the right hand of God ; but it is yet with us. " We
have not an High Priest who cannot have compassion
on our infirmities, but was tempted in all things like as
we are, without sin."* There is no depth of human
trial which He has not tasted, no suffering in which He
has not a share. u It behoved Him in all things to be
made like unto His brethren, that he might become
a merciful and faithful High Priest before GodJthat
He might be a propitiation for the sins of the people.
For in that wherein He Himself hath suffered and been
tempted, He is able to succour them also that are
tempted."f The compassion of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus is ever present in every place. It flows through-
out the Church. It has poured forth its divine tender-
ness through all successions of time. It is the fountain of
all ministries of consolation in providence and in grace.
It is with us from our regeneration ; it dwells upon our
altars ; it encompasses us as a pavillion, and is open to
us as the tabernacle of God. He still stands in the
midst, and says: "I have compassion on the multi-
tude :" still, through the hands of His servants, He
* Hebrews, iv, 15. f Ibid., ii, 17, 18.

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distributes corporal and spiritual mercy. What are
holy sacraments but perpetual streams of grace,
cleansing, absolving, strengthening, feeding the soul
of man ; a supernatural order which, by perpetual mi-
racle, fulfils the type of the loaves in the wilderness?
What are the manifold and inexhaustible ministries of
charity, ever active through the company of His pas-
tors, and through orders of religious consecrated to
His service, but the perpetual distributions of His
love? The disciples still dispense what the Lord
blesses and bestows. The whole history of the Church
is a realization of His compassion: " I will not leave
you orphans: I will come to you." "Behold, I am
with you all days, even unto the consummation of the
world." The Apostles went forth into all lands, as
from their Master's side, to distribute the gifts of His
mercy. A work of supernatural compassion multi-
plied in every city and nation of the earth. As the
Sacred Heart of Jesus shed itself into the hearts of
men, they in turn became the dispensers of mercy.
As the Holy Ghost dwelling in the mystical body of
the Son of God conformed His members to their
Head, the heathen world wondered to see a new and
benign power rising up from within itself, of which
its own consciousness could give no interpretation.
Sorrow and suffering had no attraction for the delicate

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and refined, much less for the corrupt and selfish heart
of man. The splendid and stately cities of the em-
pire shone coldly upon the miseries of body and soul
which dragged themselves along their streets. A
plague broke out in Alexandria. Neighbour and friend ,
kinsman and brother, wife and husband fled each other's
touch. The dead and the dying were alike forsaken,
or cast together on the pile. Horror, and a selfish
agony to escape, hurried all natural affections away
In the midst of this tumultuous hardness of heart, who
are these that move to and fro with as calm a mien and
step as measured as if they ministered in some sacred
rite? What is this tenderness of hand, this unwearied
patience, this prodigality of self; what is this loving
service of the dying, this reverent composing of the
dead, but the compassion of the Son of God flowing
into the members of His mystical body, and through
them upon the suffering and sorrows of the world?

What filled the hard and selfish earth with apostles and
pastors, with martyrs and confessors, with missionaries
and evangelists of peace, with messengers of unwearied
charity, with servants of human suffering? As man-
kind has sorrowed, the Sacred Heart of Jesus has ever
put forth its compassion. The particular suffering of
each successive time brings forth some particular
ministry of love. Every want and woe of man re-

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 93

ceives a special care. Every malady of body, as it
arises in the dark succession of human sickness, calls
forth some new provision of charity. Every malady
of the soul is met by its consolation. The history of
sorrow is the history of religious orders. The redemp-
tion of captives, the care of orphans, the fostering of
outcast children, the feeding of the poor, the restor-
ing of penitents, the sheltering of the innocent — each
has its ministers. But time would fail to number up
the channels and streams of inexhaustible compassion
flowing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The life of
His saints is the transcript of His love. What are St.
Francis and St. Dominic, St. Ignatius and St. Philip,
St. Camilltis and St. Vincent, but each one in his day
the embodying and exercise of some part of the mani-
fold compassion of their Master ? They are the dis-
ciples of the Sacred Heart ; the ministers of its sym-
pathy and consolations. What, too, are the sons and
daughters given them in multiplying succession to this
hour, but the perpetual miracle of grace shadowed
forth in the wilderness?

And further, as in this miracle, the omnipotence of
Jesus, as well as His compassion, is ever present to
His Church. Throughout the history of its rise,
expansion, and perpetuity, wheresoever we turn, we
see His almighty working.

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What is the unity of the Catholic Church but a
perpetual revelation of almighty power ? For eighteen
hundred years it has stood, the visible and continuous
witness of Him who is one and undivided. " One
Body, One Spirit, One Lord." The unity of the
mystical body descends from above; as the seamless
robe was tl woven from the top throughout." It springs
from the unity of the Person of its Divine Head,
and in the midst of this discordant world, hangs from
His almighty hand, a mystery and a miracle. May
we not even say that the second creation is a higher
revelation of omnipotence than the first? For the
natural world arose into harmony and order out of
passive unresisting matter. The Church has grown
up into its unity and peace in the midst, and from the
very substance, of discordant and conflicting wills.
What but the harmonising power of omnipotence
could first unite and then sustain in one this incohe-
rent mass? They that believed were of one heart
and of one mind, not in Jerusalem alone but in every
land, under every sky, of every race, and of every
tongue. Individual peculiarities passed away in like-
ness to one divine character; national discords were
absorbed in one world-wide commonwealth. Nothing
personal or local could resist the power which changed
all into its own form, and held all in the bonds of a
free spontaneous unity.

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 95

And this miracle of grace is not an event in the
past, but a perpetual reality. Through eighteen
centuries down to this day, through all changes of
time and of the world, it still holds on. Men pro-
phesy its end ; hut it never comes. They labour to
divide it, but only cut themselves away. For this
unity, like its divine life, is indestructible. The om-
nipotence of its divine Head is the source of its
imperishableness. " Every plant that my heavenly
Father hath not planted shall be plucked up." Em-
pires and dynasties of man have come and gone, but
the Church of God stands still. Schisms and heresies
rise, flourish, and pass away. The unity of truth, as
it saw their beginning, so it sees their end. It out-
watches their brief existence ; itself, as its Divine Lord,
" yesterday and to-day and the same for ever." The
new creation, as the old, rests upon omnipotence. The
floods which have descended on the Christian world,
sweeping before them the most enduring works of
man and time; wars and invasions, barbaric hordes,
the swarming people of the north, the resistless tribes
of east and south, have only borne before them the
human elements, and laid bare the foundations of God,
which are eternal. Asia and Europe have received
and lost, again and again, endless forms of human
order and human society ; but the one Church has

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stood through all — still stands, unchanged, and inde-
structible.

And yet it is not more in the unity and imperish-
ableness of the Church, than in its perpetual and
inexhaustible multiplication, that the omnipotence of
its divine Head is unceasingly revealed.

The unity which sprung from the upper chamber
expanded to the ends of the world. What was local
became universal ; ever extending, ever filling up its
sphere, ever penetrating as the leaven in the meal,
ever assimilating all things to itself. The whole moral
and intellectual nature of man passed into its form
and its possession ; first, individuals, one by one, then
households, cities, nations, and kingdoms, the rude and
the refined, conquered and conqueror, the primitive
and the degenerate in race, in civilization, and in
culture — all gave way, all gives way still before the
Presence which is in the Church of God.

And this divine gift of fruitfulness by which the
Church has multiplied itself in all the earth, and in all
ages since the ascension of its divine Head, is, if pos-
sible, still more wondrously revealed in the powers
which it is ever putting forth to regain and to repossess
itself once more of the soil and the site from which it
has for a time departed. What changes and vicissi-
tudes has not the Church endured. Our own land,

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 97

for instance, once was heathen, then Christian, then
heathen again, then Christian once more. Spain, first
Christian, then Arian, then possessed by Mahomet,
then Catholic again. Arianism for generations, almost
for centuries, seemed to hold Lombardy as its own.
The East revolted in mass from the Vicar of Christ,
and now in every place it feels once more the jurisdic-
tion against which it rebelled, and is penetrated on
every side by confessors of Catholic unity. In the
convulsions of Protestantism, whole nations seemed
lost, which in a while were encompassed again within
the divine kingdom of Jesus Christ.

The one Church universal has neither bound nor
limit. It is not as the broken branch, which, in the
words of St. Augustine, ulies on its own place;"
maimed, local, and national. It interpenetrates again
into all lands ; it is present even in the heart of revolted
kingdoms ; it springs forth again, and overspreads once
more with its exuberant life the soil which schism for
a time lays bare.

And this leads us to another truth taught us by the
miracle in the wilderness ; namely, that not only is the
compassion and the omnipotence of the Son of God
always with His Church, but that, when season and
time are ripe, He is ever near to interpose in its

behalf. It was not on the first, nor on the second

7

98 HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST.

day, but on the third, that He fed the hungering mul-
titude. He interferes, not when man's expectations
demand, but when His own time is full. There seems
to be a divine jealousy in the acts of His omnipotence.
He alone can do them, and He will do them in such
time and way as that all may know the event to be
His work. He " loved the Church, and delivered
Himself up for it ;" His own hand will work for it, and
will not leave the issue of its trials in any other.

The whole career of the Church verifies this law.
For what is it but a series of conflicts and victories,
of straits and deliverances, of last extremities and
almighty interpositions?) The whole history of the
Church is one endless struggle ; heresy against truth ;
schism against unity ; the world against the kingdom
of God. From age to age we see the finger of His
special providence interposing at the last hour of
need, j When men have thought all hope gone ; when
all human help has been in vain, and all earthly fore-
sight baffled, when looking on each other, they have
said, " From whence can any one fill them here with
bread in the wilderness?" then, and not till then, His
destined time is comej|

See how this has been verified in the history of
heresies. Ebion and Cerinthus, Arius and Eutychus,
Macedonius and Nestorius, the master spirit of perver-

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 99

sity in every succeeding age, each in turn has risen and
towered till he seemed to have none above him. The
heresy of the day appears always to be on the point of
prevailing; but yet always passes away. Heresies
sprang up even while apostles were on earth. St. Au-
gustine numbers more than eighty already condemned
before his time, and these only the chief among many
more not numbered : by the fifth century heresies had
obtained their historian. Sometimes they carried all
before them: cities and nations, the court and the em-
peror, flocks with their pastors ; they spread east and
west, penetrating into every place except that one to
which denial of faith has never come ; they became
lorldly and dominant, learned and imposing, wealthy
and in honour; they seemed to overshadow the earth,
and to lift themselves to heaven. But where are they
now? They must needs have time to reach their
full stature before they fall, that their fall may be
the more conspicuous, they must grow up into a
head, before the foot of the Son of God will crush
them. In every age, when the time was ripe, Peter
spoke by Celestine and by Leo, by Innocent and by
Gregory ; and by Peter spoke the Divine Head, who
gave to His Vicar upon earth the authority and power
to speak. Heresy fell before the Word. Its name
was clean put out, and its place knew it no more.

1 00 HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST.

The same we see again in the history of schisms.
How many fatal divisions seemed all but accomplished.
Some threatened the very centre of the Church itself:
for instance, in the great convulsions of the fifteenth
century, when national pride struggled with Catholic
unity. For seventy years the strife reached even to the
See of Peter. The waves lifted up their voice, and
the surges lashed the Rock ; the end seemed come at
last. When in His time the Divine Head put forth
His hand ; and there was a great calm. Four centu-
ries of unbroken unity have succeeded.

And so, once more, what are the trials and straits
through which the corruption of Christian kingdoms
and the rebellion of the national will have made the
Church to pass, but so many examples of the ever-
watchful care of the Son of God — every peril a token
of His presence, every hour of need a time of inter-
position ? What is the last great Council which, after
ages of peril to the faith and unity of Christendom,
holding in Trent its sessions fearless and imperturbable
amid schisms and storms, has stamped its ineffaceable
decrees upon the Church throughout the world, but
a token from on high of the omnipotent compassion
which interposes to save when the hour to work is
full?

When our divine Lord promised to the head whom

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 101

He had chosen for His earthly kingdom, that the
gates of Hell should not prevail against it, did He not
thereby prophesy that they should storm upon His
Church? When He said, " Simon, Simon, behold
Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you
as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith
fail not," did He not foretell the trial and the victory?
And are they not perpetual both, the prophecy and
the promise, fulfilled and fulfilling through all the
course of the Church even to this day?

The world looks at the crisis, and proclaims the
Church to be divided and the faith to be denied. The
faithful look at the issue, in which the unity and in-
fallibility of God and of His kingdom are revealed.
They who are out of the unity of that divine tradition
observe the momentary and outward perturbations as
heathen gazed upon eclipses, believing nature to
labour and the divine power to fail. They who are
within the kingdom which is immovable behold as
with a naked eye the law which orders and harmo-
nises all. It is in these very anomalies, as at first
they seem, that the changeless and divine laws of
the Church are tested and confirmed.

Need I say what, at such a time as this, has drawn
my thoughts this way?

1. Have we not here, and now before us, an ex-

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ample to be remembered in days to come of the com-
passion of our divine Lord upon the perseverance of
faith? " They have now been with Me three days."
Catholics of England, not three days, but three long
ages you have followed on. Three hundred years of
persecution, exile, and contempt have not turned you
back. You are the offspring and the heirs of a per-
severance which flows from no source lower than the
power and compassion of the Son of God. If the
stress of time and of the world — if will of man or
malice of falsehood — if torture and bloodshed — if
rack or sword could put out the light of faith, yours
would be long extinct.

I have been commanded to speak to you, and can-
not but obey. Obedience is my only help in a crowd
of memories and thoughts, which, at this time and in
this place, would close my lips. In obeying, I speak
not so much to you as of you — not as exhorting those
of whom I am to learn, but as a witness of your faith.

Yet it is hardly for me to speak even of those
heavenly gifts which we possess through you. There
is perhaps but one matter on which with any fitness
I may dwell, on which I may even claim to have a
better knowledge. While you and your fathers suf-
fered, how has it fared with those who smote you?
How fare the posterity of those who laid hand on the

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 103

Church of God? This at least we know too well, of
which you happily know but little.

Let the religious history of England, Ireland, and
Scotland give the answer. The same supremacy
which fell so heavily on you, in the same century
drove Scotland to rebellion. It forced the life-blood
from the established Protestantism of England ; it cast
out in the century succeeding the best and devoutest
of its remaining followers. Not more in schism from
you than from each other, the sects of Protestantism
have divided and subdivided till unity has no exist-
ence among their ideas of good. With schisms through
three weary centuries came every form of error ; and
with error, contradictions, doubts, and controversies ;
5 and now the minds of men seem to have lost percep-
tion and earnestness for truth as truth. Each claims
his own view and is content. No matter who may
err, or how deeply, so that each be free to choose..
Not this or that doctrine of Christianity, but truth as
such ; truth as the light of the intelligence, the food
of the soul, has suffered this dishonour; not this or
that article of the Creed, but the principle of faith,
the divine foundation of belief, has been uprooted.
The great wound of England is loss of faith in the
divine reality of objective truth.

It is the head and the heart that have suffered.

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Indifferentism has stunted and impoverished both.
When the Church ceased to teach, men began to
opine. Opinion became the ultimate rule of faith.
I am not speaking only of freethinkers and sceptics,
whose light philosophy derides the belief that Re-
velation is an object definite and positive, spread
before the reason as the firmament before the eye.
Such speculators, indeed, know no truth but the
veering shadows and states of their own mind. In
them a carelessness for truth is no wonder, and less
cause of fear. But there is a wound which has
struck deeper into our people. It is the forfeiture
of faith, even among the better and the truer; a
disbelief in any divine tradition which alone has
objective certainty; and therefore in the perpetual
presence of a Teacher sent from God. In this land,
so noble in all else, thousands wander benighted
without a guide. They have been taught to believe
that no such Teacher or tradition now exists ; that
God has not provided for man a certain knowledge
of His truth. Many would acknowledge what I
say. They are at this hour seeking with perpetual
anxiety, which wears and exhausts the heart, to know
the mind of God in Jesus Christ. They would fain
believe, not by historical injury and human criticism,
not by conjecture or by guess, not by calculating pro-

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Labilities, or on the certainty of their own mind alone,
but upon some basis which, like the Truth itself, shall
be divine. They once trusted that those who claim
to be the pastors of this people could teach them truly ;
but in the midst of contradictions they have asked for
guidance, and waited in vain for a response. When
the faith, by confession of their very teachers, was
openly denied, they looked up with inquiring gaze to
the authority which they had believed to be divine.
They asked in vain. In the hour of need there was
no help in it. The authority in which they trusted
failed, because it had no consciousness of divine com-
mission. It could not speak for God, because it was
not the organ of His voice. Transformed as it was to
them, yet you would have told them that its nature
was not then suddenly changed, but only at last re-
vealed to their unwilling eyes. Slowly and painfully
they yielded to the truth, that what they had believed
to be divine was not a Church just then fallen from
unity and faith, but a human society, sprung from
private judgment, established by civil power; human
in its origin, human in its authority, and because human
without divine office or power from the first. The
land once fair in their eyes became a wilderness; but
Jesus still was there. He stood in the midst, and His
disciples with Him, the same in pity and in love.

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Through you He distributes still the food of life.
Through your perseverance, under God, the proposi-
tion of the Faith has been preserved to England.
Without you the Church for us had ceased to speak,
nay even to exist. It had been clean gone. You
alone preserved the divine rule of Faith. Through
all gainsaying and unbelief you and your forefathers
have never ceased to teach, that as man has no know-
ledge of salvation through the grace of Jesus Christ
except from the revelation of God, so he can have no
certainty what that revelation is except by the Church
of God; that as the Church of God, the temple of
His Presence, and organ of His living voice to man,
is one, visible and infallible, so that Church is no
other than the Church which, having its circumfer-
ence in all the world, and its centre in the See of Peter,
unites us at this hour by a lineal and living conscious-
ness of divine faith with the revelation of the day of
Pentecost. Within this divine tradition alone is to
be found the certainty and reality of Faith.

2. And lastly, as we have this day before us an
example of perseverance, so also of the merciful and
timely interposition of our Lord.

In three long ages of persecution, as your forefathers
followed along the weary march of time, many indeed
fainted by the way, many turned back ; many who

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. J 07

endured through persecution, failed when peace re-
turned. What fear and terror could not do, smooth
days accomplished. Some who would rather save
their faith than life itself, at last gave faith away to be
rich in gold, or to wear a bauble, or to sit with princes.
The world was too sweet and strong. Is it not true that
for more than two hundred years, from the time of the
schism until this century, the Catholics of England
were waxing continually fewer and weaker, while this
people and empire were waxing mightier and stronger?
They who escaped from persecution were scattered by
civil war; and they who returned from their dispersion
were crushed by despotic power. The Catholic Church
in England saw its bishops dethroned, its priests slain,
its altars rifled, its sanctuaries profaned, its cloisters
violated, its universities occupied by error, its colleges
and schools turned against the faith ; it saw the whole
culture of the intellect, and the whole discipline of the
mind, matured by its own wisdom, and reared by its
self-sacrifice, wrenched from its hands. All this and
more it has endured. Banished from political and
social life, the prey of falsehood and injustice, scorned
and impoverished, wasted and worn, generation after
generation, what wonder if its numbers and relative
weight declined? It was outcast in the land of its
ancestry, and an alien to its mother's children.

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But was it Protestantism that gained what faith lost ?
Far from it. Sin, worldliness, indifference, unbelief,
practical atheism, all alike were gainers, but little else.
As the Church grew weak in England, the powers of
truth and right, the influences of the unseen world,
were weakened too. So ran on the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, till the Catholics of England
were numbered only by thousands, all but absorbed
in the mass in which they lay concealed.

Then was the crisis full, and the hour to work was
come. The Lord came ; He stood in the wilderness.
Once more the creative power of grace passes from
His hands, multiplying the little that remained ; re-
producing what was once destroyed, covering again
with His presence the land so long wasted and bare ;
pastors and flocks, sanctuaries and altars, families
of religious, men and women sacred to God and
to charity, multiply around us: a mission expands
into a Church ; the whole form and structure in beauty
and in majesty, old yet new, rises as from the earth.
Wonderful visitation ! though never absent, He seems
to be nearer now. In what an hour and in what
a land ; in the centre of the mightiest empire of the
world, before whose face and against whose will no
church formed by man can stand a day. What human
society, what sect would dare to speak for the eternal

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truth before its princes, to stem its popular will, to
confront the sovereignty of England? Mighty in
itself, it is mighty in all its works, in its massive struc-
ture, and its world- wide activity, and its unerring
movements, like the mechanical forces of some vast
engine, resistless in weight and complex in action ;
mighty too in its evils, in its teeming heresies, its mul-
tiplying schisms, in its worship of the world, in its
prosperous unbelief. Three hundred years of religious
strife and of worldly gain have done their work.
Under a fair surface lies hardly hid a practical atheism
and a corruption of moral life, of which they that
should know most know least.

And not only what is worst, but much of the better
also in this people, is arrayed against the Church of
God. Its very name they have been taught to hate.
And why? Say what men will, for this reason above
all, that the Catholic Church alone will not cease to
speak for God. Day and night it bears witness of the
worldunseen ; it makes judgment nearand sin terrible.
It will not hold its peace, nor unsay its message, nor
leave its doctrines open, nor sanction contradictions,
nor admit opinions on the faith, nor suspend its divine
office to declare the truth, nor abdicate the sovereignty
it has from God. It will do none of these things to be
at peace with the world, and eat bread from the hand

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of man. Therefore the whole land rises against it.
But through the rising storm the tokens of the divine
Presence also re-appear. He has re-entered upon His
own. In the hour too when the work of Anglican
reformation had been rehearsed before men's eyes, and
the deeds of three centuries ago, contrary to the order
and march of time, returned before the eyes of the
living ; so that they who will see may see, and seeing,
both judge and act even now as they would have
judged and acted then; in the moment of silence and
suspense, when the Anglican communion was invoked
to declare the faith, and against its will confessed that
its inspiration was of the will of man, not of God ; in
that hour there fell a shadow upon England, and a
presence more than human moved up against all earthly
powers. He that wrought miracles in the wilderness
put forth His hand to save. A supremacy higher than
all, even His on whose head are many diadems, came
and stood in the midst, imposing its divine jurisdiction
upon the souls for whom He died, and commanding
their return to the obedience of faith.

What, Fathers in Christ, what brings you here to-
day but to legislate in His name ? After three hun-
dred years, to build again what fear or force threw
down ; by a Divine power to undo what the sin of
man accomplished. Another in the august line of

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 1 1 1

Pontiffs has restored what a sainted predecessor gave,
and bestows once more what England forfeited. The
hierarchy of Gregory is reproduced in the hierarchy
of Pius : a new order rises in its perfection. The
Church of England in Synod takes up its work again
after a silence of three hundred years. It reopens its
proceedings with a familiarity as prompt, and a readi-
ness as calm, as if it resumed to-day the deliberation
of last night. Though centuries of time have rolled
away since it sat in council, the last Synod in England
is but as the session of yesterday to the session of the
morrow. Time is not with the Church of God, save
as it works in time, and time for it. The prerogatives
of the Church, like His from whom they spring, are
changeless. You meet here as of old once more ; you
have no principles to seek, no theories to invent, no
precedents to discover ; from the highest obligation to
the lowest usage, all is definite and sure. After centu-
ries, the Church puts forth its divine laws and powers,
and applies them to the needs of place and time with
the precision of a science and the facility of instinct.
What is human stiffens and dies ; the Living is ever
in act as He in whose life the Church lives eternally.
And if we be faithful now as you of old, what a
future is before us ! All things bespeak a great here-
after. All around is laid upon a scale of vastness.

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The empire of Britain cannot be neutral in the earth.
Its mass is too great to move this way or that without
inclining the world as it sways. For good or for evil,
it must leave its stamp upon the future. Under its
shadow must spring up surpassing forms either of life
or death. Penal colonies inexhaustible in evil, or
Catholic races, cities, and states, must be its offspring.
As the Greek and the Latin of old, so the Saxon blood
and speech now are spread throughout the earth; a
prelude, nowas then, of some profound design of God.
Already the Saxon, with his kindred races from our
shores, encompasses the world. They are flowing to-
gether ; they are meeting in new regions of the earth ;
ever moving on, westward from the Atlantic, eastward
from the Indian Seas. The earth is girdled about
with our race, bearing forth with them the institutions,
traditions, and customs, the nerve, the intelligence, the
endurance, the will of England. They are laying
deep and wide the base of civilization, of empires yet
to come. Not without purposes in heaven is all this
accomplishing. Do we not even now already perceive
its issue? Even now already the Catholic Church
holds the widest possession of this mighty frame. It
is penetrating on every side with all its power of life
and of futurity. The See of St. Peter is present in all
the colonies of England ; the unity of the Catholic

HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST. 1 1 3

Episcopate binds them all in one; the Priesthood
already lifts the one Sacrifice in every land ; orders
consecrated to God have their home in every clime :
what are all these but germs of the future, fruitful
principles, and productive centres of unity and truth ;
Nothing shall be lacking in the hour of need ; for the
Multiplier is there. All things do Him service ; even
those that resist Him, in resistance do His will. For
three hundred years the empire of old Rome strove to
put out the truth ; for three hundred years, in every
city and province of its mighty sway, the praetor
and the lictor, the axes and the rods, wreaked their
worst upon the Faith. For three hundred years all
the conscious influence of Rome was bent in one
aim to destroy the Church of God, but all the while
its unconscious influence, even without its know-
ledge and against its will, wrought for the Name
of Jesus. It confirmed His kingdom upon Earth.
Through all, the Church still stood, expanding in
calmness and in power, moulding to itself the frame-
work and the substance of the empire. It had
united all nations, that the Church might penetrate
mankind; it had proclaimed silence in the Earth,
that the infallible voice might be heard ; its fleets
and armies opened land and sea for the passage of

evangelists ; its roads and commerce laid the world

8

1 1 4 HELP NEAREST WHEN NEED GREATEST.

together; its laws protected the faithful, its cities
were apostles' thrones. So shall it be again. Let us
fear nothing but mistrust. We need but faith, and
faith too is a gift of God. He is with us in His com-
passion and His Omnipotence. The Lord is come
into our wilderness, and the hour to interpose is nigh.
Though the line of St. Augustine be broken, and his
See without a name ; though the saints of our Saxon
land seem left without offspring or inheritance, St.
Alban and St. Bede, St. Edmund and St. Thomas,
shall yet have sons as princes in all lands. " The
land that was desert and impassable shall be glad,
and the wilderness shall rejoice and shall nourish
like the lily. It shall bud forth and blossom, and
shall rejoice with joy and praise; the glory of
Libanus is given to it ; the beauty of Carmel and
Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord and the
beauty of our God. Strengthen ye the feeble hands,
and confirm the weak knees. Say to the faint-
hearted: Take courage, and fear not: behold, your
God will bring the revenge of recompense; God
Himself will come and save you."*

* Isaias, xxxv, 1-4.

II.

DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE.

PREACHED IN THE SECOND PKOVINCIAL COUNCIL OF

WESTMINSTER,

1855.

DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE.

" What man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man
that is in him ? So the things also that are of God, no man
knoweth but the Spirit of God."— 1 Cor., ii, 11.

IN these words of the apostle the Holy Ghost re-
veals to us His own mysterious work in the Church
of God. He draws a parallel between the depth
and secrecy of the mind of man, and the inscrutable
abysses of the mind of God. As the mind of man is
hidden and impenetrable, shrouded in itself, so that
no man can read or divine his inmost thoughts, so the
mind of God is veiled in its own immensity: it has
no counsellor, assessor, or witness. As the individual
consciousness alone knows the thoughts of each man's
heart, so none but the Spirit of God can know the
thoughts of God.

But God has revealed His mind to us. " We have
received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit
that is of God, that we may know the things that are
given us from God."

When the Holy Ghost, on the day of Pentecost,
descended upon the Apostles, the mind of God was

118 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

unfolded to them. They became the witnesses of the
mysteries which are hid in God : they were partakers
of His thoughts, and depositories of His intentions.
Then arose within them the living consciousness of the
Truth, which has descended lineally in the mystical
body to this hour; the divine tradition of the light of
Pentecost, in which all the revelation of God hangs
suspended in its symmetry and perfection. For what
is the Church but the apostolic college prolonged and
expanded in its organization and unity throughout the
world, wherein the mind of the spirit has descended to
us by the perpetual indwelling of the Holy Ghost? He
preserves what He has revealed, and perpetually pro-
poses to the world the truth which in the beginning
He shed abroad upon the intelligence of man. The
Church, then, is not a name of multitude, but of a
supernatural unity, the Head and the Body, Christ
mystical, of which the Holy Ghost is the life, soul, and
mind. The Church is, as St. Augustine says, " una
quaedam persona," " unus perfectus vir;" or, as the
Apostle says, " the spiritual man, who judgeth all
things, and himself is judged of no man." It is the
fountain and the channel of light to the world : the ex-
positor of the law, and the interpreter of the Truth of
God. The law of God expounded and applied in its
fulness and minuteness to the souls of men within the

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 1 1 9

sphere of its jurisdiction, constitutes the wonderful
science of law which the legislation of the Church is
perpetually elaborating. The Truth of God, inter-
preted by the Holy Spirit, and disposed in order and
harmony, constitutes the highest science of which
the reason of man Js capable — that is Theology, of
which both the author and the object is God. But
the Legislator and the Interpreter of these divine
sciences is the Spirit of God, from whom Truth and
law both alike proceed.

Such thoughts as these are seasonable at a time
like this. All things around us draw our minds this
way. The solemn invocations of the Holy Ghost are
still lingering in our ears. A synod of the Church in
England, the representative of the spiritual sway of
Calcyth, Finchal, Oxford, Herudford, London and
Westminster is gathered here. It is a Council of
Westminster once more. We see here 'the evidence
of the undying life and ever renewing power of the
Church of God, calmly legislating from age to age : re-
storing, re-creating what time or the sin of man has
destroyed, as the exuberant life of nature perpetually
re-ascends, full and ready to clothe again with fertility
the bare earth which has been scathed and torn.

For more than a thousand years the Church in
England has witnessed for the same changeless Faith,

120 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

Through all vicissitudes of time and state, through
sun or storm, it has spoken with one unfaltering
voice. What it taught by St. Augustine it teaches
now. The history of St. Bede is the transcript of
the Church of God in England at this hour, and the
Church of this hour is the history of St. Bede,
breathing and living still. There we see the same
living reverence and dutiful submission to the suc-
cessor of St. Peter, the same Divine Sacrifice upon
the altar, the same Sacrament of Penance, the same
affectionate intercession for the souls purifying in the
fire of God's love, — above all, the same invocation of the
saints, the same loving worship of the Mother of God.

A thousand years passed away, and the same Hier-
archy stood in witness and in suffering for the same
mind of the Spirit. In the face of princes and the
powers of this world, in despite of mockery and
slander, of tortures and of martyrdom, the Catholic
Hierarchy of England witnessed, till by violence it
was swept away from the earth.

Three centuries again are gone and the same truths
are still living and fresh in the heart of the changeless
Church. They are before us at this moment : the same
dutiful and loving obedience binds this Council to the
Apostolic See : morning by morning the Holy Sacri-
fice is offered up in this place by half a hundred

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 121

priests: but yesterday we commended the souls of
the departed with loving memory to the mercies of
God: the invocation of His saints rises daily from
our solemnities: above all, the name and the prero-
gatives of the Mother of God are cherished with the
devotion and fervent love of sons.

All these things lead on to another thought. The
first act of this Council was to prepare letters of thanks-
giving to the Supreme Pontiff, in humble acknowledg-
ment of the Dogmatic Bull, by which, in these last
months a doctrine of faith has been promulgated to the
whole Church throughout the world. It has been de-
clared that the " doctrine which teaches that the Blessed
Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a
singular privilege and grace of Almighty God in virtue
of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind,
was preserved immaculate from all stain of original
sin, .was revealed by God."* It does not say that it is
true, it offers no logical or historical proofs of its truth ;
it declares that it is revealed : that it was contained in
the Revelation of the Day of Pentecost. And we
receive it, not upon argument or criticism, but upon
the witness of the Church, which is the sole witness
of the mind of God, for, " The things that are of
God no man knoweth but the Spirit of God."
* Dogmatica definitio PiiP.P.IX., vi, Idus Decembris, MDCCCLIV.

122 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

Never since the great Council of Ephesus, which
invested the Blessed Virgin with the august title of
Mother of God, has so vivid and universal a joy
broken forth from the heart of the Catholic Church.
The publication of this dogma has given form and ar-
ticulation to the thoughts and desires of the faithful
throughout the world. The decree of Ephesus enun-
ciated the dignity of her Divine Maternity, the defini-
tion of Pius the Ninth enunciated the singular privi-
lege of her Sanctification ; and these two complete
the full orb of her splendour in the kingdom of God.

But it would not be seemly or in season, and, there-
fore, it is not my intention, to dwell upon the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception. I adduce it now only
as an example of the perpetual office of the Church
in discerning and declaring the limits and the contents
of the original revelation. I might indeed illustrate
this office by the history of other doctrines of the
Faith. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for in-
stance, of the Incarnation of the Son of God, of
original sin, and of grace, all of them, in various de-
grees, some more some less, exhibit the wonderful
and unerring operations of the Holy Spirit presiding
over the teaching and theology of the Church. All
alike are contained in the original revelation of the
day of Pentecost; all alike have had their period of

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 123

simple belief, of conflict, of analysis, of progression,
and of final definition.

Of these, however, I will not speak, but rather of
this last exercise of the divine office of the Church,
because it more emphatically unfolds the perpetuity
and presence of a Divine Teacher in the midst of us
in these latter days : and also, because in itself the
definition of the Immaculate Conception is an emi-
nent example of the office of the Church as the in-
terpreter of the mind of God.

I will not venture, Right Reverend Fathers and
Brethren, to offer in your presence the specific evi-
dences of this doctrine of faith. You know them
far better than I. Neither will I offer proof of a
dogma which has been uttered by the voice of a
Teacher who is Divine. The utterance itself is the
evidence of the truth declared. All I purpose to do
is to trace the outline of its history, as exhibiting the
perpetuity, the progressiveness, the perfection of the
office of the Holy Ghost.

1. The belief that Mary, Mother of God, was sanc-
tified with a sanctification preeminent above all crea-
tures, lay deep in the consciousness of the Church
from the beginning. The mind of the mystical Body
teemed with the illumination which descended from
her Divine Son. Silently, and with the love of child-

1 24 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

like faith, the Church on earth for a thousand years
gathered together all the forms of beauty, splendour,
grace, and sweetness to express the peculiar sanctity
and singular prerogatives of the Virgin Mother. Not
only the imaginative and mystic East, but the rude and
fervent West, the ardent and glowing South, and the
cold and passive North, all alike conspired to invest
her with titles of loving worship. She was placed by
unanimous and spontaneous suffrage above all the
creatures of God. She was the spotless one, and her
sanctity was expressed by the same word in which
they spoke of the spotless sacrifice upon the altar, the
spotless Church of Christ, the spotless assembly of the
Saints before the throne of God.* Again, she was
declared to be free from sin, and from all contact with
sin.f Or, again, as sanctified above all the creatures of
God : J above all, that is, not only above all fallen, but
who never fell ; above the elect angels, above cherubim
and seraphim,§ above all the court of Heaven.

And once more : As the second Eve she was all that
the first Eve was, and of a higher dignity, inasmuch
as in all things she is greater : she was the restorer of

* Soil. a/
etc. See De Im. Deiparae Conceptione — Passaglia, Tom. i, s. 2.

t Epist. Sophron. in vi Synod. " Sancta et omni contagione
iramaculata." — Suarez, in part. 3, S. Thomce, Quest., xxvii.
J Ibid. § Ibid.

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 125

the fall of the first woman: the Mother of God: the
Mother of all who live eternally.*

Both in the east and in the west, for a thousand
years, she was so called " Blessed" by the voice of
the disciples of her Son.

Then came two hundred years of intellectual conflict.
The childlike and loving faith, which, from the begin-
ning, had cherished her spotless and preeminent sanc-
tification, had to undergo the sharp process of test and
separation. This simple belief was analyzed : and the
analysis gave up two theories ; one of an immaculate
nativity, the other of an immaculate conception. And
what was the difference between these two scholastic
analyses ? Did either call in question the preeminent
sanctification of the Blessed Virgin? By no means.
Both equally affirmed it. Both alike affirmed the
Mother of God to be without sin. All were alike
agreed that the Blessed Mother of God was without
any sin, actual or original, also that she was born
without original sin : all were equally agreed that she
was sanctified by a personal and singular privilege
above andbeyond all the saints of God. In what, then,
did they differ, in what did either fall short of the
truth as now declared ? One analysis fully affirmed it.

* S. Just. Martyr., Dial, cum Tryphone, s. 100, Ed. Ben. S.
Iren. Contra Haereses, Lib. iii, cap. 22. S. Cyril Hier., Cat. xiii.

126 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

The other fell short by a point of time, a moment when
she was included in the fall. And from that day,
throughout the last six hundred years, the suffrage of
the Pastors and Doctors of the Church has been all but
unanimous. The great majority has taught that she
was immaculate in her conception, a few only in com-
parison that she was immaculate in her nativity.

Of the universities, which are the schools of the
Church, every one taught and bound its members to
teach that she was conceived without stain of original
sin. All the religious orders, the great families of St.
Benedict and of St. Francis, in all their branches and
offsets, the sons of St. Ignatius, and all who, to the
universal illumination of the Catholic Church, added
the yet deeper light of the interior and mystical life :
all, with one sole exception, taught that Mary, by a
preeminent sanctification peculiar to herself, as St
Bonaventure, the seraphic doctor of the schools, whom
we to-day commemorate, expresses it, was conceived
without original sin. The sons of St. Dominic will
not be backward to rejoice in the fact that of their own
teachers, all the greatest names, with one exception,
vast indeed in itself, but still alone in this, and a
great majority of their theologians, taught the immac-
ulate conception. It may be said, then, not that the
order of St. Dominic, but that certain theologians of

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 127

that order, defended the Immaculate Nativity. The
order as such, by the majority of its voices, united
its suffrage long ago to the unanimous testimony of
all other religious bodies.

Whence came this universal, all-pervading, vivid,
and harmonious belief of the sinlessness of the Mother
of God, but from the Spirit of God, which, knowing
the things of God, had revealed them to His Church?
It lay deep among the lights of Pentecost, and de-
scended from age to age in the perpetual living con-
sciousness of the Church.

2. But what thus lay deep in the illuminated heart
of the Mystical Body broke forth also in the form
which most surely indicates the light of faith, the
solemn festivals of the Church. Simple faith is both
keen of sight and prompt in expression : conscious of
its joys, but unconscious of the need of intellectual
definitions. The mysteries of the Incarnation, the
Resurrection, and of Pentecost were celebrated year
by year in feasts of universal joy, long before they
received the sharp dogmatic expression which con-
flict with heresy impressed upon them. So too the
Immaculate Conception. All the privileges of her
sinless perfection lay hid, and all were apprehended
by childlike love, and loving contemplation beneath
the feast of her Sanctification, which, for fourteen

128 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

hundred years and more the Church of God has
yearly celebrated.

3. Moreover, again and again this universal con-
sciousness has struggled, as it were, for utterance. It
has hung upon the lips of the Church. Again and
again the Councils of the Church all but pronounced
the words. The Council of Ephesus, when it invested
the Blessed Virgin with the title of Mother of God,
did in truth ascribe to her person a sanctification pro-
portionate to the dignity of her divine maternity.
And surely the least and the initial grace of such
a sanctity is to be free from sin. To be sinless is but
a negation of unholiness, to be holy implies the pre-
sence of a supernatural sanctity. And this she pos-
sessed in a measure proportionate to her dignity : but
her dignity transcends all that creature ever bore.
The Council of Chalcedon in exalting the Son
exalted also the Mother. It was impossible to speak
worthily of the Son of God without speaking of her
singular glory.

In the Third Council of Constantinople, and the
Second of Nicaaa, the dignity and the sanctity, singular
and sole, of the Mother of God were declared by Doc-
tors and by Saints. Through all the successive defini-
tions of the Church, as the doctrine of the Incarnation
has been unfolded in its theology, her preeminent

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 12Q

dignity has come forth with a greater light of evi-
dence and splendour.

So also in the western world. The Councils of
Frankfort and of Toledo declare her to be spotless:
the Council of Basle, in terms as express as those of
the dogmatic Bull of Pius the Ninth, declares her to
be conceived without stain of sin. " We define and
declare that the doctrine which asserts that the glorious
Virgin Mary, Mother of God . . . was always free
from every original and actual fault, and was holy and
immaculate, is to be approved, held, and embraced by
all Catholics as pious and as consonant with the wor-
ship of the Church, the Catholic faith, right reason,
and the Sacred Scriptures.*

And if the Council of Basle be not general, yet it
represents the mind of the Episcopate of the Universal
Church. Whatever differences of word or of concep-
tion may have existed among Theologians, the Episco-
pate has never been divided. It has uniformly on

* " Doctrinara illam Disserentem gloriosam Virginem Dei geni-
tricem Mariana, praeveniente et operante Divini Numinis gratia
singulari, numquam actualiter subjacuisse originali peccato ; sed
immunem semper fuisse ab omni originali et actuali culpa, sanc-
tamque et immaculatam ; tamquam piam et consonam cultui eccle-
siastico, fidei Catholicae, rectse rationi, et same Scripturae, ab om-
nibus Catholicis approbandam fore, tenendam et amplectendam, dif-
finimus et declaramus, nullique de cetero licitum esse in contrariuni
prsedicare seu docere."— Coucil. Basil. Sess. xxxvi.

9

130 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

every occasion favoured, fostered, and promoted the
pious belief that the Mother of our Lord was con-
ceived without sin.

And in the Episcopate, most conspicuously its chief
and head has ever encouraged this belief. Three and
thirty Pontiffs, in more than seventy constitutions and
rescripts, now laid up in the archives of the Church,
have promoted and given an impulse to this doctrine
of the Faith.

4. And thus the Church, in its passive infallibility,
its universal consciousness, expressed in every form of
word and witness, by liturgies and offices, by homilies
and by feasts, has manifested the truth, that Mary is
above all creatures, and all alone in the exaltation of
her unshared and singular prerogatives of Maternity
and Sanctification. And, furthermore, whensoever
the Church, in its authoritative form, or by its active
infallibility, has approached this mystery of revela-
tion, it has uniformly favoured it, and taken it
almost upon its lips.

What then has been lacking long ago to declare
the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God to
be a doctrine of the original revelation ? Nothing but
the formal definiti on andfinal proposition of theChurch.
And this too has now been granted. The Supreme
Pontiff, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of St. Peter,

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 1 3 1

sitting in the Apostolic Chair ; the pillar of supernatural
illumination ; the immoveable centre of universal tra-
dition ; the Heir of the promise, " I have prayed for
thee that thy faith fail not," has now pronounced to
all the Church under Heaven that this doctrine was
" revealed of God." And in the act of declaring this
to the world he was surrounded by the whole Episco-
pate under Heaven, partly in person, partly by repre-
sentation. And what is the Episcopate, with its chief,
but the pastoral ministry ordained, anointed, and as-
sisted by the Holy Ghost, the standing synod of the
whole Church, the Church itself, which for long
years had been supplicating of the Supreme Pontiff
that a formal definition might be impressed upon a
truth which was already and universally believed.

5. And now to make an end, what is all this per-
petual and progressive unfolding of the inward sense
and consciousness of the Church, but the perpetual
and progressive operation of the Holy Spirit of Truth
working mightily and sweetly throughout the Body
of Christ; eliciting, shaping, and perfecting the ideal
conception and the verbal expression of the original
intuition of Faith. It is the Spirit of God unfolding
the mind of God; freely and gently acting upon the
intelligence of the mystical Body; not overbearing
its operations, but perfecting its perceptions and its

*(J

1 32 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

powers, as grace elevates and perfects the will, until
it had adequately apprehended and, with unerring
precision, expressed the mode of the Sanctification
of the Mother of God.

And such, from first to last, is the work of the Holy
Ghost, searching and showing to us the deep things
of God ; for He alone is the Giver of all illumination.
On the day of Pentecost, when He descended upon
the Church, He filled it to overflow with the reve-
lation of God. All was at once made known: the
science of God descended from the mind of God and
from His inaccessible light ; absolute in its principles,
perfect in its certainty, definite in its outline. It was
a science, and the Queen of Sciences, of which the
same Spirit of God is the Architect and the Disposer,
the Interpreter and the Expositor : assisting the mind
of the Church, which, as one continuous and universal
intelligence unites the whole Body of Christ in every
age and in every land, to penetrate, to analyze, to ap-
prehend, to harmonize, and to define the doctrines of
the original revelation. It is likewise the Holy Ghost
who, from age to age, guides the Church in the choice
selection and consideration of the very words in which
to express the doctrines of Faith. It is He who
chooses also the times and the seasons when such
definitions shall be made. It was He who determined

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 133

that the consubstantiality of the Son should be de-
fined at Nicsea in the fourth century, and His own
personality at Constantinople in the fifth. It is He
who ordained the time for the defining of original
sin, and the doctrines of grace, touching and retouch-
ing them from the fifth century to the sixteenth and
seventeenth. And now in these latter days, for pur-
poses known to Himself, and yet hardly hidden from
us, He has brought to a close the long and profound
analysis by which the Church has apprehended the
full mystery of the spotless sanctification of the
mother of God, and traced it to its source in the
power of grace, that is in the singular privilege of
immaculate conception.

It is, therefore, the Holy Ghost who has promul-
gated this definition. The Church, through its Visible
Head has spoken, but the utterance is the voice of the
Spirit of God. a For what man knoweth the things of
a man but the spirit of a man which is in him ? So the
things also which are of God knoweth no man but the
Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of
this world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we may
know the things that are given to us of God. Which
things also we speak not in the learned words of human
wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit: comparing
spiritual things with spiritual. But the sensual man

134 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God,
for it is foolishness to him who cannot understand,
because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual
man judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of
no man."* The Universal Church of God is this
spiritual man, the sole Divine Witness and Teacher
upon Earth: the only Guardian, the only Judge of
the Revelation of God.

And now in its own time this truth, old in itself,
new only in its definition, has been declared. It is
precious to us as a Dogma most needful in these
latter times, when, according to the prophecy of our
Lord, faith is faint, and love is cold. It comes to re-
animate and to rekindle our devotions to the Mother of
God, much more to her Divine Son, for whose sake she
is dear to us. If it be possible to grow in love to
Jesus without growing by the same act in love to His
blessed Mother, it is certainly impossible by reason
of all natural and supernatural perfection, to grow
in love to her without a greater growth in love to
our Divine Redeemer and Lord, through whom alone
we have relation to her.

It is precious also as the last gem in the crown, the
last jewel which makes perfect the mystical diadem of
her prerogatives. She is, as St. John writes, " clothed
*1 Cor.,ii, 11-15.

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 135

with the sun," and, as St. Bernard interprets, "im-
mersed in God." The divine glory has not lightly
touched her, as the lips of the Prophet were cleansed :
nor even as the seraphim who are kindled at the foun-
tain of the Divine presence, but she is clothed with God,
and as far as a creature can endure she is filled with
God.* She is united with Him more intimately than
any other creature, for above the Divine Maternity
there is nothing but the Hypostatic union of the Incar-
nate Son. And now upon the head of her who is so
arrayed the Holy Ghost Himself has placed the crown
of her twelve prerogatives, fastened and perfected by
this last and highest of the glories of her person.

It is not, however, only as an increase of her acci-
dental glory that this definition is precious to us, but it
is precious as a Dogma. For what is a Dogma but a
revelation of the mind of God, a law of human thought
in things divine, an utterance of the Holy Ghost.
Every such definite truth descends upon us as a light
from Heaven. It is a new and pro founder insight into

* " Jure ergo Maria sole perhibetur amicta, quse profundissimam
divinae sapientiae, ultra quara credi valeat, penetrare abyssum ; ut
quantum sine personal! unione creaturae conditio patitur, luci illi
inaccessibili videatur immersa. Illo nimirum igne Prophetae labia
purgantur, illo igne Seraphim accenduntur. Longe vero aliter
Maria meruit, non vero summatim tangi, sed operiri magis undique
et circumfundi, et tamquam ipso igne concludi." — $. Bern. Sernto
de Duodecim Prcerogativis B. V. Marice. Op., Tom. iii., col. 1013,

136 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

the intelligence of God, an enlarged knowledge of
" the things of God." To the Church every dogma is
a heavenly treasure, dear and priceless, living and
giving life. Out of the unity of the one true Church
the lingering remains of the divine science, the few
surviving outlines of Dogma, stand as a wintry tree,
dead, fruitless, and bare. Men turn from them as
dry, formal, and fragmentary. And yet even in death
there is a beauty and a symmetry in the spreading
branch which lifts its naked sprays against the glow-
ing sky. It neither lives nor gives life, and yet is
graceful even in decay : even in fragments it is still
the broken structure of truth, which once had
vitality and fruit, and gave shadow and food to man.
But in the Church of God Dogma is the source of an
exuberant life. The Dogmatic Theology of the Faith
rises and expands itself as the tree of life, majestic as
the Cedar of Libanus, fruitful as the Palm, fragrant as
the Balsam, full of vitality, expansion and symmetry,
from its root to its branches, from its branches to its
outmost spray. Even the syllables of its sacred lan-
guage shed abroad the illumination of truth, the mo-
tives of obedience, the fervour of devotion. Dogma
has a sacramental power of its own. All we need to do
is to lift up the supernatural light before the reason
and the hearts of men, and, as the sun on high acts

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 137

by its own nature, the source of it pours forth an
universal influence of vitality and fruitfulness, of
splendour and of beauty.

And yet it is not chiefly as a treasure of Faith that
this Dogma is precious to us, but above all as an in-
terposition of the perpetual and divine authority of
the Holy Ghost, who is always teaching through the
Church. In the midst of the conflicts and storms of
these last times, when men are tossed to and fro in
doubt and fear, from uncertainty to unbelief, a Divine
Voice has descended and made its articulate speech to
be heard throughout the world. Even they who know
not the meaning of the voice have heard the sound.
Many things make this most timely and just, because
of the especial heresy of these latter days. " The
spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall
depart from the Faith, giving heed to spirits of error
and doctrines of devils."* And what is the chief and
master heresy of the last three hundred years, but a
denial of the perpetual office of the Holy Ghost. The
great outbreak of the human reason against the revela-
tion of God, which three centuries ago withered the
West of Europe, did not take its spring, but only its
pretext, from a denial of some particular truths of the
Catholic Faith. The Reformation did not follow from
* 1 Tim., iv, l.

138 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

a denial of Transubstantiation, or Purgatory, or In-
vocation of Saints, and the like, but from a rebellion
against the authority of the Church of God as a
Teacher, and a denial of the perpetual office of the
Holy Ghost, as the Guide of the Mystical Body of
Christ. Professing to believe in the office of the
Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier and Illuminator of indi-
viduals, it refused to submit to Him as the Illuminator
and Guide of the Body. That which is conditional
and depends upon the will of man it professed still to
believe : that which is absolute and depends only on
the will of God it rejected. And what was this but
to deny the presence of a Divine Teacher upon Earth,
to make way for the licence of human reason? This
led at once to a rejection of the supernatural charac-
ter and office of the Church, and subjected all its
doctrines to the examination and criticism of man.
The supernatural order passed away from the races
which are scathed by the Reformation ; and the hu-
man reason became not only critic and judge, but
measure and fountain of all truth to itself. Dogma
is the divine opposite to the Reformation in its root,
with all its branches and consequences.

Another reason which makes this exercise of Divine
authority most timely at this moment, is the intellec-
tual state of the age in which we live. The Refor-

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 139

mation has carried its legitimate results into the
regions of science, and we are now told that the
human mind has had its three periods, namely, the
theological or superstitious, the metaphysical, which
is almost equally credulous, and now the positive or
per feet and scientific state. And this perfection consists
in limiting science to the objects of sight and sense,
to fact and to phenomena ; excluding from the sphere
of science such elements of uncertainty as cause and
law, and God, and the like, which are assumptions or
superstitions, rendering science uncertain so far as
they are allowed to enter within its realm. It would
seem indeed as if the judgment of Elymas, the magi-
cian, had fallen upon this age : as if this generation, so
subtle, skilful, and far-seeing in the sciences of nature,
gifted with such wondrous instruments of discernment
and appreciation, were sightless only for the higher,
deeper, and diviner fields of truth. The men of this
generation can trace the path of the planets, weigh
the bulk of the moon, measure the girth of the world ;
they can make light their pencil, and electricity their
messenger, and discover metals in the sun. But the
sun itself, in its noonday splendour, the glory of the
Divine Presence; the world- wide light of the univer-
sal Church, which, with its illumination, fills the
whole Earth, they cannot see. It is as if the hand

1 40 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

of the Lord were upon them, and a mist and dark-
ness upon their sight, and their eyes, not seeing even
the sun, were judicially blinded.*

And all this is true of our own land, dear to us by
so many charities ; for England now, like Rome Pagan
of old, has become " Sentina gentium" — the pool into
which the evils of all the earth find a way. Already
twice England has risen in conflict against the Church
of God ; and twice it has seemed to men to be vic-
torious : but twice in the sight of God and His Holy
Angels it has fallen lower and lower in spiritual dark-
ness. Once three hundred years ago, when by its
proud and cruel persecution it dissolved the unity of
the mystical Body, and profaned the mystery of the
Sacramental Presence of Jesus, quenching the lights
which burn before the altar, and denying His adorable
sacrifice. Stripped and spoiled of its divine inheritance,
it still endeavoured to wear the aspect of a Hierarchy
and to celebrate Sacramental mysteries. But this was
a transient semblance. A hunded years again passed
by, and England tried a fall once more with the
changeless Church of God. Anglican Protestantism
became Latitudinarian Protestantism: the shadows of
doctrine fled away, and dogma became a by-word.

And now once more there are signs abroad of a

* Acts, xiii, 11.

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 1 4 1

third, and it may be a last conflict sorer still. There
are tokens all around of secret changes which have
reached almost to the crisis of their production.

There are five signs of future evil manifest upon
our state.

Never before were the masses of our people so
without God in the world : never was spiritual famine
so wide-spread and so blank. Millions in our towns
and cities have no consciousness of the supernatural.
The life of this world is their all.

Never before were the schisms and heresies which
have been generated by the first great heresy and
schism so manifold and dominant. The Church of
the Anglican Reformation has given up well nigh
half its people to the endless separations, which have
exhausted its vitality.

Never before were the internal and diametrical
contradictions among its teachers and guides so ripe
and unrelenting: never the confusion and uncer-
tainty, the mistrust and weariness of heart so wide-
spread and oppressive among its people.

Never was its own impotence to rule, its incapacity
to teach, so proved and manifest. It cannot judge,
it cannot decide : it may not legislate : it dares not to
solve its own perplexities : it has not mind or courage
to define its own doctrine. There is no voice to be

142 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

heard: no divine certainty, no divine guide in the
seat of its councils.*

And lastly, never was there a time when the public
opinion, the supreme infallibility which guides and
teaches in England, was so absolute in its will. It
is bearing all before it down the stream to a deeper
indifference to all positive revelation. Struggle as
they may, all must go down as the current runs.
No human will can stay its course, no human intelli-
gence avert its vehement descent.

Rationalistic Protestantism is the natural end and
term of all that moves around us. In the midst of this
confusion and disorder the Divine Voice is heard
once more as of old, speaking with command, filling
the whole world with its thrilling words. Even here
in England it is heard on every side. Here, where the
forms of human authority are vanishing away, and all
fragmentary systems are dissolving, in the midst there
is to be seen arising again the whole structure of the
Faith, the Divine Science in all its symmetry, har-
mony, and stature. It is revealing itself to the intelli-
gence of men whether they will or no, with the pene-
trating energy of light, as resistless and as silent.

* This was written in 18.55, when as yet the Essays and Re-
views, and Colenso on the Pentateuch, and all that has sprung
from them, were as yet below the horizon.

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 143

All intermediate systems are being winnowed away,
and the field which lies between the Church of God
and the power of this world is being cleared for the
last conflict. This is our call and our work : to build
up once more the Science of God in the heart of
this people. And for this end, Fathers and Brethren,
you have toiled and suffered long. God, in His wise
and almighty providence, has reorganized in beauty and
perfection the outward form of His Church in Eng-
land. And now, under the outward array of order

t

and discipline, the inward and spiritual science of
Faith is reascending. The science of God is our
strength. u Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea."
Fora holy Priesthood must command the world, and
a Priesthood skilled in the Science of the Saints must
govern the intelligence of mankind. To this end your
care is above all directed, to train up a succession of
Priests, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith ; in the dis-
cipline of sanctity, learning their theology less from
books than, as the Saint of this Festival declared of
himself, at the foot of the crucifix. And yet with
so severe and exact a study of the sacred dogma of
Faith, that even the least formula, the minutest
syllable of its authoritative terminology shall be
counted as a precious trust.

If envy could be a holy thing, I would say I envy

144 DOGMATIC AUTHORITY,

those who from their youth have grown up as the
palm trees in the house of God, nurtured uncon-
sciously in the living traditions of Divine Faith, and
expanding with even growth into the ripe and per-
fect knowledge of the Faith. But it is enough, nay,
beyond all words, too great a grace to be permitted
afar off to see, and even so late to share this glorious
inheritance of the Church of God.

What conflict and what issue may be in store, who
can foretell ? Seventy years, from the day when St.
Augustfne first set foot on Saxon England, ran out,
and the seven kingdoms had submitted to the Faith.
Fifty years ago the Church in France was swept
away by a flood of fire; and now it is renewed
in strength, ampler in majesty, preeminent in the
world. God can do great things for us, and He will,
but when and how it is His alone to know. Of one
thing, at least, we are sure. The sorrows and pangs,
the heart breaking and the agony, the tears and the
blood, which your forefathers, our confessors and
martyrs, have shed upon this soil are not in vain.
They have ascended up, and are not forgotten before
the Most High. There will come a noble reaping
from so sharp a seed time : and the keenness of the
tillage will bring an exuberant harvest in the autumn
of our time.

SUPERNATURAL AND INFALLIBLE. 145

God has a work to be done in England, and He will
do it. He has called us to share it with Him, and to
work for Him. What He has in store for you who
can tell ? Perhaps there is no palm laid up for you.
And yet who knows, for even palms are won in these
still days of ours. Year by year, in this common-
place, every-day time of our life, Martyrs have been
ascending to the presence of the Lord. But if not
this, then at least the white array of confessors: and
the reward of souls plucked from the burning, illu-
minated, healed, and saved through your zeal and
charity. If this may be your portion, it is enough :
and great shall be your recompense in Heaven.

10

III.

THE PERPETUAL OFFICE

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT

PEEACHED IN THE THIRD PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF

WESTMINSTER,

1859.

TO

THE RIGHT REVEREND THE FATHERS,

AND TO THE CLERGY, SECULAR AND REGULAR,

CONVENED IN SYNOD,

Sermon

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

THE PERPETUAL OFFICE

OF

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

" Wisdom hath built herself a house." — Proverbs, ix, 1.

WHO is this mighty builder but the eternal God, and
what is the house that He has built, but the manifes-
tations of His Almighty power? In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth ; and the foun-
dations of the house were laid. For six days in order
and in symmetry this edifice of Eternal Wisdom rose
from perfection to perfection. But the glories and the
forms of the first creation did but shadow forth His
power and Godhead. There were greater things to
come — a house mightier and more glorious, more
ample and more divine, for God had decreed that He
would become incarnate. He prepared this mystery
of His power in the Immaculate Conception of His
Blessed Mother. In that work of His eternal, all-
creating Spirit, the foundations of a nobler house
were laid. And " the Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us:" His tabernacle was our very man-
hood. Nor yet was the work of Wisdom done.

1 50 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

There was another house still to arise, built upon His
own Incarnation — that is, His mystical body, which is
the Church of God. And in the day when He said,
u Thou art Peter," words came from the lips of God,
which for power have no parallel, save when He said,
" Let there be light," and the splendours of the firma-
ment were created ; when the floods and inundations
of brightness were poured forth, and the unity and
harmony of all the heavenly lights arose together in
their multitude and their glory. So when He spake
those words, " On this rock I will build my Church:"
the unity, and harmony, and universality, and complex
beauty of the Church of God began. Time and suc-
cession of days were needed to unfold all that was
spoken, but year by year, generation by generation,
this mighty structure of the Incarnate Wisdom of God
arose to its perfection. First came the line of Pon-
tiffs— vicars of the Incarnate Word, one by one ascend-
ing in the firmament of the Church in his peculiar
splendour: each distinct, but glorious like Him whose
vicar he was. There was Leo, penetrated and glowing
with the consciousness of the divine message of the
Incarnate Word. There was the first Gregory ruling
over the Church with the patriarchal sway of a father's
love. There was another Gregory, the seventh of the
name, subduing the enemies of the Church, breaking

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 151

them with his iron will, ruling them with a rod of iron,
and governing the Church with the fire and energy of
an angel of God, There was the third Innocent, le-
gislating for the nations like his Master, in the moun-
tain. Each arose in his own radiance and beauty.
Then came the constellations of the Church — the
mighty Councils: the Council of Nice, invested with
the glory of the consubstantial Son ; Ephesus, in the
splendour of His Immaculate Mother; Lateran, lumi-
nous with the glory of the Holy Eucharist ; Florence,
with the majestic supremacy of Christ's vicar upon
earth, each one in its order, as the Eternal Wisdom
saw fit to raise the edifice of His power, layer upon
layer, stone upon stone. And yet there was still one
to arise — one constellation more, the central sun of
all, one around which, as their centre, all the Councils
of the Church find their path, in which the splendours
of all others are united.

The time had arrived, foreseen in the Eternal Wis-
dom, when men's hearts had waxed cold, when the
islands of the Saints were barren, and the lands of the
north, which had borne servants of God, sent forth
no longer Evangelists or Apostles ; when Spain, once
so glorious in the Church, had become a trader in the
west, and when Portugal — the handmaid of the Holy
See — had lost its zeal in the marts and markets of the

152 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

east ; when Germany sent forth a brood of errors to lay
waste the fair fields of the Faith. The time was come
that another manifestation of Wisdom should arise ;
and for eighteen years the Episcopate of the Church
sat in Trent, under the Legates of the Holy See, with
power of intellect, with consciousness of divine com-
mission, and with the presence of the Holy Ghost to
legislate for the future. Then there arose alight above
all other lights — such as that described by the Prophet,
when he said "The light of the moon should be as the
light of the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold as
the light of seven days." For three hundred years
this Great Council has ruled the Church. Its voice
and its spirit have reigned with undiminished power.
It stands supreme, the test of faith, and the rule of
all legislation, for the Catholic world. But time
forbids me to do more than touch lightly upon some
of the special characters and prerogatives of the
Council of Trent.

The Council of Trent was a Council of Recapitula-
tion. It was the heir of all the definitions of the
Church. The heresies of old assailed here and there a
doctrine of the Faith ; but God permitted nowa heresy
to assail, in a whole line of errors, not only the whole
line of the Faith, but also the divine authority of
the Church itself. The Council of Trent, therefore,

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 153

summed up in its decrees what other Councils had
declared. All their voices spoke by its one voice, as
on the day of Pentecost all the Apostles spoke by
Peter. The Councils of Africa again promulgated
their decrees of original sin ; the Council of Orange, of
preventing grace; the Council of Vienne, of the in-
fusion of spiritual habits in regeneration ; the Council
of Toledo, of the procession of the Holy Ghost ; the
Council of Lateran, of the mystery of Transubstantia-
tion ; the Council of Florence, which was itself the
summary of the Councils of the East, spoke in all their
names ; all these received their expression in the de-
crees of Trent. And , further, it not only recapitulated
all Councils, but it harmonised all schools of Theology.
The scholastic disputations of the Dominican an.d
Franciscan families, the Angelic and Seraphic Theolo-
gies, found in the Council of Trent their unity and
solution. Its decrees form a Summa of Theology.
Explicitly and implicitly they present as a whole the
revelation of the day of Pentecost. The profession of
Faith, promulgated by Pius the Fourth, recapitulates
the doctrines of the whole Church of God, East
and West in one, and presents it to the world in
ample array, bright and resplendent ; over against the
prolific error of these later days restless with a per-
verse intellectual activity, and fronts its advance,

154 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

reaching from wing to wing: " pulchra ut luna, electa
ut sol, terribilis ut castrorem acies ordinata."

Again, the Council of Trent was in an eminent
sense the Council of Reformation. It would be an
unpalatable task to dwell on the evils of the time.
But an example or two may suffice. The second see
of the West — the see founded by St. Barnabas, whose
patron was St. Ambrose, had hardly for eighty years
seen its Archbishop. It had been governed by vicars,
of whom many had better not have been there. There
were parish priests who knew not the form of abso-
lution in the sacrament of penance ; there were priests
celebrating the Holy Mysteries, who believed them-
selves exempt from the duty of Confession. They
dressed as laymen, and wore arms. If such were the
priests, what were the people ? There was also the
see of St. Antoninus — the birthplace of St. Philip —
and the social life of Florence corrupted by the influx
of Oriental luxury. If such was Italy, what were
other lands ? It was to redress such a disordered state
that the Council of Trent assembled. Other councils
had essayed before what it alone accomplished. It
was truly a Council of Reformation. Filled with the
Holy Ghost, and consumed with zeal for the house
of God, it began its work. The fire of jealousy for the
sanctity of the mystical Body of Christ penetrated it

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 155

throughout. Conscious of the presence of the Vicar of
Christ, whose Legates presided over its acts, it began,
" totius familiae Domini status, et ordo nutabit, si quod
requiritur in corpore, non inveniatur in Capite."*
With the Head it opened its work. Judgment began
at the House of God, with the sacred College itself. It
prescribed their way of life, and the virtues demanded
by their state. It then, with a holy boldness, reminded
the most blessed Roman Pontiff, thatnothing was more
needful than that he shouldchoose out of all nations to
clothe with the sacred purple those alone who were
most fit. It proceeded from Cardinals to Bishops, to
their dignity and duties and obligations ; then to the
Priesthood, to the Religious ; and lastly, to the Faith-
ful. With the scourge of discipline, and set on fire with
jealousy for the divine honour, it cleansed the sanc-
tuary, after the exam pie of Jesus in the temple of God.
And, further, the Council of Trent was a Council of
Reconstruction. It anticipated with a wonderful fore-
sight the needs of the Church in these later ages, and
provided for them. The course of the world had for
centuries lain heavy upon the freedom and action of
the Episcopate. Traditions, and customs, and civil
laws trammelled and fettered it. The encroachments
of the secular power were confirmed by long prescrip-
* Cone. Trid., Sess. xxiv, 1.

156 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

tion and the Holy See had struggled long, and often
in vain, to emancipate the Episcopal jurisdiction. It
was at this time that the spirit and tendencies of modern
society were beginning to appear, and the nations of
Europe were reconstituting themselves upon a new
basis. And with the new forms of political and social
power the Church must have to cope. For this end,
by its sovereign decrees, the Council of Trent swept
away the so-called Ecclesiastical customs and laws,
imperial, royal, and national, which usurped upon the
Episcopate. It restored to the Pastors of the Church
the fulness of their sacred jurisdiction. It gave back
to them the sovereignty of their Apostolic thrones and
the free use of their prerogatives. And, as the political
and social state of the world was changed, a new Eccle-
siastical legislation was demanded, both to prevent the
renewed accumulation of disorders, and to enable the
Church to conform and adapt itself, by its ever-living
and creative power, to the new forms and exigencies
of modern society. Therefore it imposed on Metro-
politans the obligation of convening every three years
their Provincial Council ; and on Bishops, their Dio-
cesan Synod year by year:* so that the last three
centuries have been eminently the centuries of legis-
lation. A multitude of Councils, Provincial and

* Cone. Trid., Sess. xxiv, 2.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 157

Diocesan, by their vigilant deliberations and decrees,
have perpetuated the action of Trent throughout the
whole extent of the Church.

And for this end, it recognized more amply than
any other Council of the Church, even than those
over which the Sovereign Pontiffs in person had pre-
sided, the supreme legislation and executive authority
of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It committed to him
the confirmation and accomplishment of its decrees.
And for this the reigning Pontiff, Pius the Fourth,
by three great acts of sovereign power, provided.
First, he abolished all ecclesiastical prescriptions and
customs contrariant to the decrees of this Council.
Next, as our Divine Lord withered the fig-tree and
dried up its future life, he declared that no prescrip-
tion should ever acquire force against the decrees of
Trent.* And lastly, he forbade under pains all in-
terpretation of its text, reserving to himself and to
his successors the sole and exclusive power to inter-
pret its letter and its will.f

It may be likewise said, that the Council of Trent
was in a special way the Council of Active Charity.
It gave an impulse to the works of the Church, which
not only endure, but go on multiplying to this day.

* Bulla Pii IV, " In Principis Apostolorum Sede."
f BuLa 1'ii IV. '* Benedictus Deus."

158 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

The times foretold by our Divine Lord were already
come : " Because iniquity hath abounded, the charity
of many shall grow cold." The nations of Christen-
dom had long been growing cold. Centuries, dreary
and dark, had swept over the Church since the fires
of Pentecost descended, and lands which once glowed
with the love of Jesus, had grown bleak and barren.
Not that the sacred Heart of Jesus, which is the Heart
of the Mystical Body, had ceased to beat, or its pulse
to vibrate with as intense and fervent a love as in the
beginning; but that the hearts of men had ceased to
respond to it and to kindle as in the earlier days. It
was not, there fore, without a reason that God permitted
the heresy of imputed righteousness to arise, that the
Church should declare that men are justified by the
justice of God, "non qua ipse Justus est, sedqua nos
justos facit," not by a shadow, but by a substance, by
the inherent justice by which, " vere justi nominamur
et sumus ;" by the in-dwelling of the Holy Ghost and of
Charity, inasmuch as " per Spintum Sanctum, Charitas
Dei diffunditur in cordibus eorum qui j ustificantur,
atque ipsis inhaeret ;"* whereby they become the tem-
ple of the Sacred Heart itself: " Cum enim ille ipse
Christus Jesus tanquam caput in membra, et tanquam
vitis in palmites, in ipsos justificatos, jugiter virtutem
* Cone. Trid., Sess. vi, 7.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 159

influat." Jesus lives and dwells and works in us, and
by us, and we work in Him and by Him, and the
Sacred Heart is the principle of all the supernatural
charity which works throughout the Church. With-
out doubt, it was the impulse of this decree that re-
vived again the fires of charity, and made the whole
Mystical Body to vibrate, and to stir once more with
the impetuous beat of divine love. New forms of zeal,
and new industries of mercy, covered the face of the
Church. St. Ignatius, St. Philip, St. Charles, St. John
of God, St. Francis of Sales, St. Vincent of Paul, were
the creations or the witnesses of this Dogma ; and they
became the creators of new ministries of active charity,
needed by the sores and wounds of modern society
and the exigencies of the Church. The Sons of St.
Benedict and of St. Dominic will not think that I do
them wrong if Isay that under the majestic shadows of
their old Orders, as under the outspreading arms of
the cedars of Libanus, the springing grass, the waving
corn, and the running vine, have healed and covered
the face of the Church. I may say that the Devotion
of the Sacred Heart, which has rekindled the devotion
of the whole Catholic world, and organised itself in a
multitude of forms, and become the very life of ordi-
nary active works of love, was itself the offspring of
this great Council. The peculiar character of St.

160 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

Francis of Sales was the fruit of this profound dogma
of the life of charity. His Treatise on the love of God
what is it buttheTridentine decrees expanded and am-
plified into a science of mystical Theology ; and what is
the Order of the Visitation but the fruit of this science
of God, poured forth into the heart of St. Francis ; and
whom did our Divine Lord select to promulgate the
worship of His Sacred Heart, butapoor, despised, per-
secuted, unlettered daughter of the Visitation ? It was
not to our St. Anselm, illuminated as he was with the
Science of the Incarnation, nor, to St. Bernard, who
burned like a tree of fragrance with the name of Jesus,
nor to St. Bernardine of Sienna, whose lips distilled
the sweetness of the names of Jesus and of Mary,
nor to St. Bonaventure, the seraphic Doctor, nor to
St. Thomas, with the sun of the science of God upon
his breast, but to the poor Margaret Mary that He
vouchsafed the grace and the glory of spreading
throughout the Church the knowledge and love of
His Sacred Heart, the great devotion of these latter
days, the offspring and the interpreter of the Decrees
of Trent, the Theology of active charity.

And lastly,— for the time warns me to draw to an
end, — the Council of Trent was, above all, the Coun-
cil of the Hierarchy and the Priesthood. Other sects
had denied or disfigured the doctrine of the Priesthood

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 16 1

of the New Law. But no heresy as yet had arisen to
deny, with such detailed contradiction, the Pontificate
of the Holy See, the power and preeminence of the
Episcopate, the proper Priesthood of the Christian
Church, its divine institutions, and powers. All was
denied in detail, that all in detail might be once again,
and once for all, defined. The Councils of the Church
had indeed recognised the dignity and sanctity of the
Christian Priesthood. They had made laws for its
direction, and had invested it with a halo of venera-
tion. But none had as yet drawn out the whole
Theology of the Sacrament of Order, its divine insti-
tution, its sacramental grace, its indelible character.

And more 4than this. Other Councils, in earlier
days, had uttered urgent and moving exhortations for
the better rearing and forming of Priests in the Schools
of the Church : but it was the Council of Trent that
for the first time defined and described the idea of a
Seminary, and imposed upon the conscience of every
several Bishop, by a positive and grave obligation in
the form of a decree, the duty of founding near the
Cathedral Church, a Seminary for his Diocese. And
this because the work of the Church upon the world
is measured by its work first upon itself, and its work
upon itself is centred in its work upon its Priesthood.
Though the supernatural element of the Church is

11

162 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

changeless, and works sacramentally upon the world,
nevertheless the cultivation and perfection of its Pas-
tors is a condition of its success. For the germ of the
Church is the living body of men, who succeed to the
Apostolic office. They are the centre, the productive
principle of the whole body, of its organization and
of its expansion. " Vos estis lux mundi," ye are the
light of the science of God ; " Vos estis sal terrae," ye
are the savour of inward sanctity. To you, Right
Rev. Fathers, is committed the custody and the trans-
mission of thes'e supernatural gifts. To you has been
entrusted the power of the Son of God to choose, to
call, to create the Priesthood of the Church. You
have the supernatural power to mould, to shape, to
transform, to transfigure the youth of the Church for
the service of the Altar. You can do what no other
may attempt. Others may minister sacraments, preach
the doctrines of Faith, study, and teach Theology;
but you alone can call before you a mere stripling,
impress upon him the token of the crown of thorns,
bid him to say with you, " This is my body," " This
is the chalice of my blood," and speak over him,
" Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins ye shall
forgive, they are forgiven : and whose sins ye retain,
they are retained." This power is yours alone. With
you is the very life, the future, the ripeness, the

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

163

multiplication of the Church. " Spes messis in se-
mine." The harvest shall indeed be plenteous, and
whiten in due season to the reaping. But the seed
is the youth crowned with the tonsure, and bearing
the future of the Church in his heart.

Such are a few of the leading characters of this
Great Council, which summed up in itself the mind of
Christendom for its fifteen hundred years, and for three
hundred years has ruled the Church, as with a perpe-
tual living voice. Never before has so long an inter-
val elapsed between Council and Council, and never
has any reigned so supreme. I do not forget your le-
gislative powers, Right Rev. Fathers, when I say that
every Provincial Council in these three centuries past
has been, as it were, a particular Congregation of the
Council of Trent, guided by its light and influence,
and subject to its sovereign decrees. I do not forget
that the Council of Trent has invested you especially
with the powers by which it is characterised, as Judges
and Guardians of the Faith, Reformers, Legislators,
Guides of the Charity, and Fathers of the Priesthood
of the Church. As such you have assembled here to
legislate and to decree for the Church in England.

61 Bonum est nos hie esse." It is good for us there-
fore to be here in the heart of this nineteenth century.
There is a feebleness of character which spends itself

164 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

in musing on the past, and in dreaming of the future ;
but the sphere of action and the time of our probation
is in this living, energetic, and masculine present. It
is an amiable weakness to admire the time gone by,
which spreads before us as a beautiful illusion, or to
lose ourselves in hope and anticipation of a splendid
and stirring future, which may never be, at least for us :
both are equally unreal and equally unprofitable. Our
season and our work are here and now, in the moment,
which is passing. It is indeed a common thing to
exaggerate the events of our times, and to believe
them to be greater, or worse, or nobler, or more mo-
mentous than any that have yet been. Nevertheless,
it may be said that our days are days of great events:
great powers are abroad, great conflicts are fighting,
great gains or losses must be made.

It is a time when the power and working of him
whom the Apostle called 6 awpo? " ille iniquus," the
wicked,* the lawless one is sensibly abroad and rife.
The spirit of social disorder, the enmity against all
heads anointed with Royal and Sacerdotal union, is
in fuller presence and force than in the ages past.
Empires and kingdoms have gone down before it;
nations have dissolved, and the social order of Chris-
tian Europe has been disintegrated as by a corrosive.

* II Thess., ii, 8.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 165

The mightiest monarchies have crumbled under its
action. The Church alone has resisted its power, and
stands the sole principle of order, the only structure
which cannot be destroyed.

It is good for us to be here, under the glorious
Pontificate which marks an epoch in the centuries
of the Church. The name of Pius was crowned
with martyrdom in the first who bore it; and twice
in this half-century they who bore it have been con-
fessors and exiles. It is not therefore from the exile
of the reigning Pontiff that this century will take
its character and its greatness. But the age will be
marked in the history of the Church by a dignity more
divine. As the fourth century was glorious by the
definition of the Godhead of the Consubstantial Son,
and the fifth by that of His two perfect natures, and
the thirteenth by that of the Procession of the Holy
Ghost, so the nineteenth will be glorious by the defi-
nition of the Immaculate Conception. We have seen
the day and are glad, and the age will take its character
from this event. Neither is it a little thing that in
the midst of the scorn of the world, from the uplifted
palms of the Vicar of Christ, constellations of Apos-
tolic Thrones have descended upon the waste places
of the earth: and on every side the Church has begun
to legislate in Council, and to adapt its inexhaustible

166 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

powers of government, and subdue the world. This
nineteenth century will mark a great epoch in the
history of the Church : it summons us to great works
and to great conflicts, but it pledges to us great helps,
great sacrifices, and great rewards : wherefore also it
is good for us to be here.

And lastly, it is good for us to be here in England.
It is yours, Right Rev. Fathers, to subjugate and to
subdue, to bend and to break the will of an imperial
race, the will which, as the will of Rome of old, rules
over nations and people, invincible and inflexible.
You have to rear the House of Wisdom which was
fallen ; and to do this, you have now, as the Apostles
then, to gather from the spiritual quarry the stones
which shall build up the house of God. You have to
call the legionaries and the tribunes, the patricians, and
the people of aconqueringrace, and to subdue, change,
transform, transfigure them one by one to the likeness
of the Son of God. With such a Priesthood, what
may not be done ? What Evangelists and soldiers of
Jesus Christ may not arise from the inexhaustible
energy, the steady courage, the fearless enterprise, the
intellectual capacity, the indomitable will of England ?
You have a great commission to fulfil, and great is the
prize for which you strive. Surely, a soldier's eye and
a soldier's heart would choose by intuition this field of

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 167

England for the warfare of Faith. None ampler or

nobler couldbe found. WhatNicewas to Arianism and

Ephesus to the heresy of Nestorius, and Africa to the

schism which withered before the presence of St.

Augustine, such is England to the master-heresy of

these latter days. It is the head of Protestantism,

the centre of its movements, and the stronghold of

its powers. Weakened in England, it is paralyzed

everywhere : conquered in England, it is conquered

tlroughout the world, once overthrown here, all is

but a war of detail. All the roads of the whole world

mset in one point, and this point reached, the whole

w)rld lies open to the Church's will. It is the key of

the whole position of modern error. England, once

restored to Faith, becomes the Evangelist of the world.

In the midst of the religions of men which are crumb-

liig around, " Wisdom is building herself a house."

And the Church in Council has to do for England,

•what it has already done for Spain and for Lombardy.

Spain was overrun by Arianism, mined and tainted

e^en by Judaism, furrowed by internal wars, and its

evil power was hardly Christian when the Councils of

loledo, a long line and glorious, reconstituted it once

nore a Christian and Catholic monarchy. Lombardy

vas corrupt and disordered in every state and condition

<f its ecclesiastical and social life. The Seven Councils

] 68 THE PERPETUAL OFFICE OF

of Milan, under the inflexible will and glorious spirit,
which reigns there still supreme, restored it to be the
mirror of the Council of Trent, and the example of the
Church. What may not the Councils of Westminster
achieve ? Three times you have met in Synod here.
The first laid the foundations, and the second and the
third are raising the structure: the others were full of
a future, but this if possible still more. Who knovs
what may be in store for us ; what you, Right Rev.
Fathers, may be now preparing for the ages to come?
All things call us to work and to hasten : the times in
which we live, the land in which we are, the admo-
nitions of this place. It was but the other day, and all
the splendours of the Synod were darkened ; its gold
and its fair colours were veiled ; the altar was stripped
of its beauty, and all was changed to the hues <f
mourning, the plaints of intercession, and the solem-
nities of the last absolution. In the vacant spare
where you are sitting, there was a bier, the memoriil
of those who were and are not> the warning to IB
who are, and shall not be. A few short years ag>
they were here as we are now; as full of intellee
tual power, of Apostolic authority, and of sace>-
dotal grace. They are passed, and others hold ther
place : as we too shall pass and be no more remem-
bered. Build then, Fathers and Brethren, while yot

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 169

may." Exibit homo ad opus suum, et ad operationem
suam usque ad vesperum."* Man shall go forth to
his work and to his labour until the evening. It is a
brief day at longest. It is the eventide with many
here. " Mane nobiscum Domine quoniam jam ad-
vesperascit." Who shall sit here when the next
Synod of Westminster shall deliberate? The day
is far spent, for most. Little remains for a work
beyond the proportions of a life. Our time is short
and fleeting ; but it is not its shortness or its fleetness
that is the true measure of how brief it is. It is the
greatness of the work we have to do. We work and
live for the glory of the Holy Trinity, for the salva-
tion of mankind, bought by the most Precious Blood,
for the building of the Church of Jesus Christ : for
such a work, the life of the youngest here is short
indeed. What then is ours, which already is towards
evening? u Work then while it is day, for the night
cometh when no man can work."

* Ps. ciii, 23.

IV.

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF
JESUS.

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEP-
TION ON THE FEAST OF ST. IGNATIUS,
1852.

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

" Ye shall be hated of all men for My Name's sake." —
Mar ft, xiii, 13.

THE greatest practical intellect of ancient philosophy-
has said, that uif ever a perfect man should appear
on earth, he would seem to be strange and out of
place." He would be a wonder and a monster. His
very presence would be irksome to mankind ; they
would desire to be rid of him, because the nature of
man has a dull instinct of its own imperfection,
which makes the presence of perfection intolerable.

And what philosophy conjectured, the spirit of
prophecy foretold. Isaias, foretelling one that should
come, said, " There is no beauty nor comeliness ; we
have seen Him, and there is no sightliness that we
should desire Him. He is despised, and most outcast
among men ; His look is, as it were, hidden ; He is
despised, and we esteemed Him not."*

And what philospher conjectured, and prophet
foretold, the coming of the Son of Man fulfilled.
" God was manifest in the flesh;" He was a stranger
among His creatures, and out of place in His own

* Isaias, liii, 2.

1 74 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

world. When the Son of God came on earth, what
was His daily life but one continuous fulfilment of this
prediction ? Imperfection could not bear the presence
of perfection: man's fallen nature could not endure
the presence of Man without sin. The whole life of
our Divine Lord, as we read it in the Gospels, is a de-
tailed verification of this great truth. How was He
treated? by what titles was He designated? Some
said, " He is a good man ;" others said, "Nay, but He
seduceth the people ;" others, again, "Say we not well
that Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil ?" *'By the
prince of the devils He casteth out devils;" " He is
beside Himself;" " He hath a devil and is mad, why
hear you Him?" " We know that this man is a sin-
ner."* So was the Son of God received among men.

Nor was it by titles only that men vented their im-
patience of His sanctity. What was His last Passion
but the amplest fulfilment of this same prophecy ? The
crown of sharpness and of mockery ; the robe of scorn
wherewith He was clothed ; the fool's coat for which it
was exchanged ; the rod and the scourging which sated
the petty spite of men, — what were all these but so
many tokens of the irritable, frightened, savage resent-
ment of sinful man in the presence of One without sin ?

And surely it was not without design that the Son

* St. John, ix, 24.

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 175

of God endured all this. Why did He choose to
pass through all these trials but for some deep pur-
pose? Was it not in compassion to us? Was it not
that He might first taste all that His followers should
taste of after ? Was it not that no scorn or hatred
might be in their cup unknown to Him? Was it
not that no one should suffer for Him but might say,
" This, Lord, Thou hast tasted for me?" It was His
compassion, His pity, His tenderness for us, that
made Him expose Himself to be rejected by His
own creatures, to be hated of all men, and first to
bear all shame and scorn for our sake.

And what He bore Himself He also prophesied
for us. What He Himself endured His prophecy
pledges to us. " Ye shall be hated of all men for
My Name's sake." My Name is hateful, and ye shall
bear it ; and for My Name's sake ye shall be hated
too. " The disciple is not above the master, nor the
servant above his lord. If they have called the good-
man of the house Beelzebub, how much more them
of his household ?" *

And has not this been fulfilled to the very letter ?
Is not, again, the whole history of the Church a ful-
filment of this same prophecy ? As with the master,
so with the servant. As soon as our Lord ascended to

* St. Matthew, x, 24, 25.

1 76 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

His Father's throne, what was the lot of the Apostles ?
They were dragged before the Sanhedrim, bound,
scourged, and imprisoned. Stephen was stoned;
James slain by the sword. Whithersoever they went
bearing the Name of Jesus, everywhere hatred fol-
lowed them. There was an instinct in mankind
which abhorred the Holy Name. Judaism, — God's
faith once, — cast off when through unbelief His
chosen people clung to shadows and knew not the
reality, — the same Judaism became the persecutor of
the Name of Jesus. The Jews were the first to shed
the blood of Saints. Throughout the whole earth
they were the foremost to kindle persecution. The
whole history of the disciples of our Lord, from the
first who suffered to the Prince of the Apostles, was
hatred and martyrdom for Jesus' sake.

And do we think, brethren, that this was foretold
only for them ? Was it reserved for the Apostolic age
alone ? Did it expire with the Apostles ? Far from it.
What do we see in the Book of Revelation? What
is that mighty power sitting on seven hills, " drunk
with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the
martyrs of Jesus,"* but Paganism, the second greatest
enemy of the Name of Christ on earth ? And what is
the history of the centuries which follow, after Jerusa-
* Rev., xvii, 6.

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 177

lem was razed to the ground, and could persecute no
longer ? What is the warfare of imperial Rome against
the Faith, but the hatred of a sinful world striving to
wear out the Name of Jesus from the earth? What
are the ten persecutions that soaked the empire with
blood, and filled heaven with martyrs, but so many
fulfilments of this prophecy ? Read in the history of
the Faith. Hated in all the cities of the earth, what-
soever ill bef el the empire, the Christians were in fault.
If expeditions failed, it was because the temples were
forsaken ; if the provinces were troubled, it was be-
cause of the Atheists ; if it rained too much, the Chris-
tians had offended the gods; if it rained too little,
" the Christians to the lions." They were enemies of
mankind, haters of the human race, hateful them-
selves, haters of light, lovers of darkness, and blacker
in their deeds than the darkness which covered them.
So it ever was till the unclean spirit was cast out, and
Rome with her seven hills was consecrated to God.

But did persecution cease even when heathenism
fell ? Did it come to an end when Babylon sunk as
a millstone into the depths of the sea?

The prophecy was not yet exhausted. Hatred of
the Holy Name is a perpetual inheritance in the seed
of the serpent. Heresy took up what heathenism

could no longer do. When St. Cyprian had gone to

12

1 7 8 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

his crown under the sword of idolaters, St. Athana-
sius and St. Gregory, St. Chrysostom and St. Flavian,
and many more in the East and West, in Africa and
Italy, in Greece and Spain were crowned confessors
and martyrs by the hand of heretics.

Nor was the strife yet over. When heresy passed
away, another power took up the trade of persecution.
The world had become Christian and the empire of
Rome owned the name of Jesus : once more the na-
tions of the world were established in peace ; the cross
sat on the tiara, and men thought at length that
security had come, and the Church would reign and
prosper. Then, clothed in Christian monarchies, arose
the spirit of the world, unchanged and unrelenting.
Under whatsoever garb, the substance of the world,
what is it ever but enmity to God, proud self-will, im-
patience of subjection ? To go no farther than our own
land, see how this is verified. Look back on Saxon
England. Dutiful in faith, in sweet bonds of union
with Christendom, this land peaceful and tranquil, was
fair and green, rich with the gifts of nature and of
grace. It was in unity with the Chair of Peter, and
had saints for princes. In those days of meekness and
sanctity no presumptuous nationalism had set itself
against the sovereignty of God's Church on earth.
Then look a little onward to the times when the Nor-

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 179

man entered, and a mighty monarchy, laid in blood,
bound by laws of iron, lifted itself in pride and
struggled with the kingdom of God. Look on those
days when kings, who neither feared God nor loved
man, conspired against God's Church. They sinned
and prospered, prospered and sinned yet more. Again
the old strife began, when St. Anselm, all alone,
crossed the will of a king in behalf of the unity and
sovereignty of Jesus Christ; when St. Thomas of
Canterbury stood unto the death against the power of
a monarch backed by prelates and by barons, who
kissed the hand from which they held their domains
and ate their bread. What was this new contest but
the old and changeless spirit of the world ever hating
and contending with the Name and kingdom of Jesus ?
What did these disciples of the Cross meet at the hands
of the world for their faithful testimony but exile and
death ? — one crowned a confessor, the other a martyr.
Why need I go on ? Is not the same hatred perpe-
tual even until now? Will it be said, as indeed the
men of this world say, drawing their pens fine to write
the history of saints, u Anselm was an arrogant and
stubborn prelate : Beckett proud and ambitious. It was
not for Christ's sake they suffered, but for their own
evil passions ; for turbulence, obstinacy, and rebellion ;
for their own faults they were justly punished by the

1 80 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

laws of their country and the sovereignty of their
prince?" Well, are saints faultless? Yes, -when
crowned ; not when in warfare. The faults that re-
main in them are, it may be, the dross upon which
persecution fastens for their purification and perfec-
tion. Be it so. Saints are men, and men are frail.
But would the world love them better if they were
without fault? Would the world be more at peace
with them if the saints were sinless? There was One
without sin and the world mocked Him, and His own
people nailed Him on the cross. Let us not be told,
then, that they who stand for the Name of Jesus suffer
for their own sins. No doubt they had them, but they
suffered not for these. There is a deeper and diviner
reason — a reason unchangeably true. They had the
Divine Presence with them; and they were visibly
stamped with the Name they bore. They crossed
the will of the world in its pride of place, and set a
bound to its pretensions. They were tne shadow of
a Superior, and the ministers of a higher law. This
was their true offence.

When the historian of this world censures, he is
but serving his master. He must make a case for per-
secutors, or human nature itself would abhor them.
But these alleged offences are the pleas and the ex-
cuses, not the causes of the contest. In truth, what is

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 181

it that keeps ever alive this conflict between the world
and the name of Jesus ? The claim of sovereignty for
a Divine kingdom ; the authority of an inflexible law ;
the unbending rule of Faith; the unpardonable sin
that the Church allows of no higher upon earth than
the head which our Divine Lord hath chosen ; the ir-
remissible offence in the eye of the world, that we
acknowledge an universal sovereignty, a fountain of
jurisdiction superior to all powers upon earth ; the trea-
son never to be forgiven that the Church cannot be
frightened and will not be patronized : this is the secret
of the contest still. It ever has been, it ever will be.
The world may change its forms, but not its substance.
Judaism, paganism, heresy, nationalism, secularity,are
only forms ; the substance of all is sin, and sin is always
the same. It must hate the Holy Name ; and they
suffer most from it who are most like their Lord.
They are hated most for the name of Jesus who most
visibly bear His likeness. If we find ourselves at
peace with the world, woe be to us. If the world
dwells in tranquillity with you, look well to it. If you
will but be negative, yielding in principle, vague in
doctrine, the world will heap its favours on you, and
our Lord will cast you off. When you find the world
most opposed to you, be of good cheer ; you have a
sure token that you are in the right. It has been so

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

always ; it always will be. It is the only, the perpetual
law of that great contest between the seed of the
woman and the seed of the serpent. If you are the
servants of an offended God, the followers of a
crucified Master, how can the world but hate you?
It must be so ; and if we be not hated by the world,
we know on which side we are. If we are in peace
between two opposites, remember Who hath said,
" he that is not with Me, is against Me ; and he that
gathereth not with Me, scattereth."*

And now, Brethren, perhaps there was never any
time when hatred of this Holy Name was deeper than
in the sixteenth century; never any time when the
principle and spirit of nationalism had grown to a
greater height. The struggles of seventy years, when
the kingdoms of Europe all but revolted from the
Holy See, had added a great force to the license and
turbulence of national sovereignties. The spirit of
paganism had come in again through an excessive cul-
tivation of classical literature, and a fanciful adoption
of the thoughts, ideas, and types of the ancient world.
The foundations of Christian faith were sapped ; uni-
versities and schools talked paganism ; philosophy and
literature were beginning to revolt from the unity of
truth. It was a time of urgent peril, when the cor-
* St. Matt., xii, 30.

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 183

ruption of nations, which weighs always on the visible
Church, had become a burden too heavy to bear ; sanc-
tity was low, charity cold, and immorality dwelt in
honour: at that time, when all the elements seemed
ready for some great warfare, and centuries of disor-
der were pressing to the conflict, the confederacy of
Christendom itself seemed in peril of dissolution, and
the Church to be shorn of strength ; at that moment,
when prelates and princes, statesmen and orators, the
learned and the wise, eager and anxious, hurried to and
fro, wondering at the things which were coming upon
the earth, God was preparing His weapon in secret.
His instrument was chosen. He found him not in
apostolic thrones, or in the chairs of the learned ; not
in the high places of the world or of ecclesiastical
precedence. There was one in a far land, unknown
to the Church, and to those who knew him best, known
only in courtesies and arms, in courts and sieges, the
bravery and pride of life, without theology, without
learning, without token of penance, without reputation
of sanctity. Him God chose to confound the wise, to
show that the work was not of man but of God. While
man knew it not, the intense will of Ignatius lay pros-
trate before God in the solitude of Manresa. He was
communing with God in secret, and there learned by
illumination what chairs and schools could never teach.

1 84 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

The science of God and man in its principles and in
its axioms was infused into his intelligence. Theo-
logy in its fulness, though not in its development,
sprang up within him, to be elicited afterwards by
question and fixed by expression.

And then, because he lacked the learning which
comes by acquisition, at man's estate, as a child he
sought it in a school of children. Having found his
end, the dedication of his whole being, with all its
powers and with all its freedom, to the glory of God,
all other things fell into the rank and harmony of sub-
ordinate means. Every thing else was subservient to
that one purpose. He was learning also in the school
of the Holy Name ; and the portion of Jesus was his
portion too: humiliation, contempt, suspicion of he-
resy, imprisonment, and stripes. And what did these
for him ? They all worked together to root out the
last fibres of self, and to clear his capacious heart for
God ; that the will of God might penetrate and possess
him in its fulness, perfecting the freedom of his own.

It is not for me to attempt to sketch the character
of this great saint ; least of all, to venture upon that
spiritual world which lay between his soul and God.
What can I say of that intense love which dissolved
him at the altar, which held him seven hours, day by
day, upon his knees ; what of his profound humilia-

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 1 85

tions before God and man? what of his supernatural
tenderness of devotion to our Divine Lord and His
spotless Mother ? Of these I cannot speak. All that
I can do is to touch upon those marking features of
character by which he was visibly distinguished
among men.

And, first, we see an irresistible and governing
will, before which all things, self, and the world,
and the wills of other men, gave way; as if in the
spiritual world there were a power of electricity and
a law of gravitation to recast all it touches, and to
hold all in its harmony and orbit.

And to that will was united a profound humility,
which concealed himself and put others forward ;
which, while they knew it not, shaped and formed
his companions to his own purpose, and made his
work theirs, and their work his.

And with that profound humility was joined a
grand simplicity of thought and word, so that every
truth and every duty was enough for the moment to
fill the whole of his expansive soul. What a picture
is it of St. Ignatius where we read that, while his spi-
ritual sons were sleeping, he was wont to walk to and
fro by night, pacing his chamber in deep thought,
leaning upon his staff! What mighty capacity of
soul was there ! The whole work of the Church ;

1 86 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

catechism for the young; spiritual exercises for the
elder; the teaching of schools; the discipline of col-
leges ; missions for the heathen ; the whole order and
unity of the Church throughout the world, and the
whole doctrine of faith, the entire theology, and with
this, all science, the whole family of human sciences,
were all alike embraced within the capacity of his de-
signs. And with this vast capacity, what immense
energy ! No sooner had his Society received the seal
and approval of Christ's Vicar upon earth, than it
seemed to cast itself forth with an instantaneous ex-
pansion, and to fill the old world and the new with
its presence and operation.

And, above all, I would touch, though it may seem
to be a homely feature, on one most marked and pro-
minent in the character of Ignatius, — the masculine
common sense which governed all his actions. What
is this homely feature but the highest result of the
highest powers, without which all other gifts are dra-
matic and unreal ? It is in this common-sense that the
greatest powers of man return again to the simple in-
tuition of an instinct. It unites and harmonises all,
and concentrates them upon the time and circumstances
of life and action. It is the subtle discernment which
marks off the essence from the accident, which is able
to penetrate with a glance into the centre, the sub-

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 1 87

stance, and vitality of all things. It is the power
which by instant perception seizes on the moment and
the season, moulding and applying means to ends at
the juncture and the crisis. This gift, which all great
servants of God possess, in him appears with such ma-
turity and fulness, as even among other saints to give
to his character a marked and peculiar perfection.

What a mind and soul was there in preparation, —
the prelude of some mighty work, a work which has
been indeed accomplished — a mind proportioned to an
apostle's throne, to sit as a ruler and a patriarch in the
elect of God ! And what was this deep and lofty charac-
ter but the mind of Jesus, of Him whose Name he took,
founded in humility, and made perfect in obedience.

And now, brethren, shall I pass from the character
of the saint to the character of that illustrious Society
which he founded? It is his own character again.
The same capacity, the same vast comprehension, the
same energy, perseverance, and endurance. It is his
own presence still prolonged, the same perpetuated
order even in the spirit and manner of its working,
fixed, uniform, and changeless. It has passed into a
proverb, that the Society of Jesus has had but one go-
vernor, Ignatius still. And what are its works ? Look
at the stamp left on the discipline of the Church, on
its centre and its unity ; look on the missions of the

1 88 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

Catholic world ; look on the science of theology, that
vast creation of illuminated reason steadfastly contem-
plating the orb of divine truth ; fresh and fertile in its
beginning, exact and harmonious in the more perfect
order of the middle ages. St. Augustine, St. Bona-
venture, and St. Thomas will forgive, if I say that
Ignatius well repaid to them the price of his nurture
when he gave to the Church Bellarmine and Petavius,
Vasquez, Suarez, and De Lugo, besides newer but
memorable names. Other hands, indeed, have made
precious contributions; but who has chiefly raised
the fabric and the structure of sacred science since
the last great Council, but the Society of Jesus ; and
who is the master-builder but its founder?

It is not for me to be the eulogist, but the learner.
And yet when I turn my thoughts towards this our
island, there are traces which may make even stones
to speak of St. Ignatius. He once stood here among
us ; once he was a sojourner in this city. Little thought
he in that day, when from his prayers and his studies
in Paris, he came to beg alms of Spanish merchants in
England; — little thought he of the work that he should
one day do, the sons he should one day give, the blood
he should one day shed for England. Six years before
the mighty convulsion which rent England from Ca-
tholic Unity he came to London. The elements of

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 1 89

the tempest were already gathering for the conflict;
but as yet they lay motionless and still, as impending
storms hang silent in the atmosphere. The heavy
hand of despotism held them down ; but heresy had
already made its lair in England : the state had already
drawn in the poisonous breath of secular ambition.
All things were ready for the outbreak when St. Ig-
natius came among us, asking alms in poverty. He
went his way for thirty years, to return in another
guise, and at a darker season. Both he and England
had much to do before they should meet again ; and on
both parts the destiny was accomplished. The storm
which lay beneath the horizon in a little while broke
forth. Six short years, and England was severed from
the see of Peter. It was a bitter quarrel, which in
history has been written with a gentle name, — " the
removal of the Pope's jurisdiction," and, "the restor-
ing of the ancient supremacy to the crown of England."
It was no contest about Peter's-pence, first-fruits, or
Annates ; these were only baits to lure the greedy and
words to blind the poor. They who made this sepa-
ration knew too well at what they aimed. And they
did their work well. England was rent from Catholic
unity without perceiving that the deed was done. It
seemed a mere act of Parliament declaring ancient
laws with no new changes. The time was not yet.

1 90 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

He who did this deed went to his account. And
next, for the iniquities of the land, a child was the
ruler thereof, and in that child's name the proud and
the greedy ruled and reformed, plundered and dese-
crated. He too was soon gone ; then came a short fair
season and a little hope ; but it was stained with the
sins of men. The shortlived promise was baffled, and
likewise went its way. Then came the last in that
line of princes, doubtful at first of her policy and her
faith, and the storm came up more quickly, the
clouds covered the heavens, and began in great
drops of blood, the forerunners of a tempest still more
terrible and lasting. And then, in the midst of all,
Ignatius came again ; not alone, as at first, but in a
multitude; not now in weakness, but in power; not
a student from Paris, but a saint ruling in the Church
of God. He came to England once more, to bear
witness for the name and the sovereignty, " the
kingdom and the patience of Jesus."

At length the tempest burst, and the storm fell upon
his sons. One by oiie they went to the scaffold and
the rack. The rack groaned and the scaffold dripped
with gore, as they ascended to a martyr's crown. What
a tale is the history of these three hundred years; a
twofold history, written both in earth and Heaven ;
by the wise and worldly here on earth entitled u The

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 191

Execution of Justice," in Heaven the roll of martyrs.
On earth they wore the garb of felons ; in Heaven they
stand arrayed in white and crowned. Here they were
arraigned in the dock as malefactors ; there they sit by
the throne of the Son of God. Strange contradiction
and divine, between earth and Heaven, between the
sentence of men and the judgment of God. Not one of
those who suffered but might have saved his life, and
lost his soul, by accepting the ecclesiastical supremacy
of the Crown. Fair and open as its claim appeared —
" the ancient jurisdiction," " supreme only upon
earth," "a civil supremacy," "known to common
law," " inherent in the Crown," " worn by sainted
ancestors" — the sons of St. Ignatius had too keen an
intuition not to discover at a glance what these days
are slowly learning.

Brethren, why do I go on? What was the history
of succeeding generations ? An ignoble, wearying,
worrying persecution, hunting the servants of God
from house to house, exiling them from the cities and
haunts of men, and then accusing them as lurkers in
dens and in corners. An inglorious tale, save that
it mostly ended in martyrdom.

Such was the work of Ignatius in the past ; and what
may he have yet to do ? There is a future still before
us for which we must make ready. What it shall be,

1 92 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

none can tell. This land perhaps was never mightier
in the assertion of its independence than at this hour.
The ecclesiastical supremacy newly set up three hun-
dred years ago, was never lordlier in its claim. And
now once more the supremacy which is not of this
world has re-entered. The human and Divine are
again in presence of each other. And who can fore-
cast the issue ? History, our best and only witness,
nevertheless is weak and insufficient to reveal the true
nature of the past. But the providence of Heaven
has not left us without admonition. It has re-acted
the past before our eyes.

Brethren, believe it, that there are around you
thousands who, if they saw the truth as you see it,
would be upon your side. They were not the agents of
this mighty schism ; they are heirs not of its sin but of
its penalties. They inherit an invincible ignorance.
There are thousands who, if they could discern the
dishonour offered to their Lord in the violation of the
Unity and Divine office of His Church as you discern
it, would hold no sacrifice too great to make atonement.
They would wash out in tears the memory of sharing
in the schism of their forefathers. Pray for them,
that they may learn, as you have learned, by no mere
human guidance, to see the right in this great quarrel.
They were born into an atmosphere in which all lights

THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS. 193

are distorted and all colours change their hue. Truth
and falsehood have shifted places, and the history of
the English reformation is a traditionary fable. None
hut they who, by God's mercy, have been redeemed
from the bondage of illusion, can conceive its spell and
fascination. It may be we are on the eve of some
such trials as our fathers had to bear. England pros-
pers, and therefore believes that God loves it as it is.
England has its dominion in all the earth, a mightier
empire than the world till now has seen. Like Baby-
lon of old, it has gold and silver, and traffic and mer-
chandise, and precious stones and pearls, and fine
linen and purple, and silk and scarlet, and all manner
of curious works of the craftsman and the artist, " and
slaves and souls of men." It says, " God loves me as I
am, and therefore prospers me;" and yet there is an
old saying, little heeded now, " All these things
will I give unto thee, if thou wilt fall down and
worship me."*

It may be the hour of contest is coming on once
more. Godknoweth. One thing we know. Ignatius
was never sad save when the world prospered him, and
never so glad and buoyant as when he received the
promise that his sons should be ever hated for the
Name of Jesus. Principles are ours, prophecies are

* St. Matt., iv, 9.

13

194 THE NAME AND PATIENCE OF JESUS.

God's. With prophecy we have nothing to do ; prin-
ciples are our guide. The unity and the infallibility
of the Church of Jesus Christ, these are our principles,
and these shall be our safety. They who have neither
chart nor science, watch the sky and sail by guess ;
but they who have the science of the heavens and of
the deep, launch by night as in the noonday. The
stars and science are sure, if the helmsman's hand be
firm and true. Waters may beat and winds may rave,
our way is onward, and the footsteps of our Lord are
on the deep. Who is it ever holds the helm of
Peter's bark, but the Vicar of Him who walked upon
the sea? Then let us be firm and patient. Come
what may, God's will shall be done, and the Name
of Jesus glorified.

Let us make ourselves ready, not by exciting a
mere human impulse, or the courage which runs only
in the beat of our human blood, but asking upon our
knees the still and fearless patience which descends
from the mind of Jesus. What may be before us we
know not. Why need we? Our way is plain; to
walk still in that same old path, sharp but sure ; to
serve and to suffer; to love and to be hated; to give
ourselves for the hand that is lifted now in scorn ; it
may be, one day for more. So be it, Lord, if it only
be for Thee.

V.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE
FAITH.

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF ST. GREGORY THE GREAT,

IN ROME, AT THE SOLEMN BENEDICTION OF THE

RIGHT REV. ABBOT BURDER,

1853.

TO

THE RIGHT REVEREND THE ABBOT

OF

THE C1STERTIAN MONASTERY OF ST. BERNARD'S,

IN CHARNWOOD FOREST,

WHO,

IN TOKEN OF THE FAITH WHICH THOUGH MARTYRED CAN NEVER DIE,
BUT THROUGH SUFFERING EVER RENEWS ITS STRENGTH,

RECEIVED SOLEMN BENEDICTION

AT THE HANDS OF THE SUCCESSOR OF ST. AUGUSTINE,
APOSTLE OF ENGLAND,
ON THE CCELIAN HILL,

FROM WHENCE CAME FORTH THE EVANGELISTS AND PASTORS
OF THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE,

&ty$ Sermon

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

THE

CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

" Thomas answered and said to Him : " My Lord and my God.
Jesus saith to him : Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou
hast believed : blessed are they that have not seen, and have
believed."— S*. John, xx, 28, 29.

IT was not by chance, brethren, as the Church teaches
us by the words of St. Gregory, read in the matins of
this festival, that St. Thomas was not with the other
disciples when Jesus came. His Divine Master per-
mitted him for a time to doubt, as He also permitted
Lazarus, whom He loved, to die, of whom He said,
"This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory
of God ; that the Son of Man may be glorified by it."
In the unbelief of Thomas there were, as we now
see, deep purposes of grace both to him and to us.

The notices we have of St. Thomas in Holy Scrip-
ture are few; and yet, though few, they are full of
meaning. They set before us, as by the master-strokes
of a divine hand, the whole outline of his character.
The first three evangelists record his name alone in
the number of the twelve Apostles. St. John only
three times has recorded his words: once, when Jesus

198 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

would go into Judea again, where the Jews had lately
sought to kill Him, St. Thomas broke forth with
vehement devotion, " Let us also go, that we may die
with Him."* And again, when our Lord, preparing
for His departure, had said, " Whither I go, you
know, and the way you know," Thomas took up His
words, with the impatience of love and sorrow, "Lord,
we know not whither Thou goest, and how can
we know the way?"f And once more, when the
other disciples said unto Him, " We have seen the
Lord," the same resolute heart broke forth, " Except
I shall see in His hand the print of the nails, and put
my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand
into His side, I will not believe, "t And for this un^
belief he met a divine rebuke: " Because thou hast
seen Me, thou hast believed." In what, then, was the
unbelief of Thomas more to be blamed than the un-
belief of all the rest ? When the women came, saying
that He was risen, the disciples thought it to be u idle
tales." Of both Peter and John — Peter, who by re-
velation of the Father had already confessed that
Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God; John, who lay
upon His bosom at supper — even of these chiefest
Apostles we read that they ran to the sepulchre, and
" believed ;" that is, believed that He was not there,

* St. John, xi, 4. f St. John, xiv, 4, 5. J St. John, xx, 25.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 199

as the woman had told them ; for " as yet" they knew
not the Scripture, " that He must rise again from the
dead."* Of all the Disciples, too, we know that He
appeared to them " as they were at table, and up-
braided them with their incredulity and hardness of
heart, because they did not believe those who had seer
Him after He was risen again."f And when at last
He came to them, " they yet believed not, and won-
dered for joy."J Where then was the special fault of
Thomas ? It was in the stubbornness and wilf ulness
of his heart, which not only refused to believe, but
prescribed the evidence without which he would not be
persuaded. The fault lay deep in the secret springs
of the will, seen by the Searcher of hearts alone.

And after eight days of doubting, hope, and fear,
His disciples were again within, and Thomas with
them. Then came Jesus, and stood in the midst; the
air of a sudden seemed to give up His form visible to
their sight, and He said, " Peace be to you." Then
at once, with divine intuition, He said to Thomas,
"Put in thy finger hither, and see My hands; and
bring hither thy hand and put it into My side, and be
not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered and
said to Him, My Lord and My God. Jesus saith to

* St. Juhn, xx, 9. t St. Mark, xvi, 14.

J St. Luke, xxiv, 41.

200 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

him, Because Thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast
believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and
have believed." See here the tenderness and conde-
scension of the Son of God for the sake of one soul.
To heal the unbelief of one soul He gave the very
proof prescribed, He manifested the wounds of His
Divine Manhood. How light and gentle fell His up-
braiding on the faithless Disciple ! It is only not a
benediction ; the words of reproof, almost before they
are fully heard, pass into a blessing: " Blessed are
they that have not seen and have believed."

Most needful and wholesome are such words in
these latter days, when it is towards evening, and the
light of truth casts long shadows on the earth. The
times seem now to be at hand which our Lord foretold :
" But yet the Son of Man when He cometh, shall He
find, think you, faith on earth?"* Truly the days of
doubt are come ; for men spend their lives in ob j ecting,
disputing, and refusing to believe. They censure St.
Thomas, yet outstrip him in incredulity. Truths which
transcend the reason are to them incredible ; as if the
mysteries of God were not as far above the reason of
man as the revolutions of the heavens above our petty
movements upon earth. The same people who pro-
fess to believe the miracles of the Apostles disbelieve
* St. Luke, xviiir 8.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

the miracles of Saints ; and yet the same temper which
makes them faithless in the presence of Almighty
power at this day, would have made them equally un-
believing then. They who appeal from the miracles
of Saints to the miracles of the Apostles, would then
have appealed from the miracles of Apostles to the
miracles of Eliseus. So, again, there are those who
profess to believe the divine power and commission of
the Apostles, but refuse to believe the divine mission
and power of the Church ; and yet, in the days of the
Apostles, they would have equally appealed from
them to the authority of Moses. The reason is all one ;
the true cause is, that they will not believe in the pre-
sence and power of Jesus here and now, working
among us as at the beginning. They are cold, and
slow of heart : they criticise and object ; they prescribe
the kind and the quantity of proof without which they
will not believe. " Except I shall see in His hands
the print of the nails," and " I will not believe." This
cold temper finds its way even among the faithful ; for
there are those who hanker after the sensible and lower
manifestation of the presence of Jesus; they excuse
their feeble and dim faith by saying : " If I had lived
in the days when He was upon earth ; if I could but
have seen the majesty of His form and the beauty of
His countenance ; if I could but have heard the accent

202 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

of His voice and the sweetness of His words,— I should
believe with a faith all vivid and fervent, and perse-
vere without relaxation to the end."

But what, after all, is this but to assume that the
dispensation under which they were who saw Him in
the flesh was a dispensation heavenly and divine, and
that the state in which we are now is human and
earthly; that in those days God manifested Himself
by explicit works and signs of power which now are
passed away ; that we are at a disadvantage, and have
fainter proofs, fewer helps, and greater hindrances
to faith ? This is but another form of the general
unbelief of these latter times.

The reverse is the truth. They were in the begin-
ning, we in the fulness of the kingdom of God ; they
were in the dawn, and we in the splendour of the day.
The dispensations of faith, from just Abel until the last
Saint on earth, is one and continuous ; it has had many
stages and periods of expansion, unfolding from light
to light, from grace to grace ; but Patriarchs, Prophets,
and Saints of old did not receive the fulness of the pro-
mises, God having reserved "some better thing for us,
that they should not be perfected without us."* We
have received what they foretold and saw not ; for
" God, who at sundry times, and in divers manners,

* ffeb., xi, 40.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

spoke in times past to the Fathers by the Prophets,
last of all in these days hath spoken to us by His
Son."* And yet even in this last crowning revela-
tion of His kingdom, there are stages and periods of
advance. It began in the moment of the Incarna-
tion : but it had its fulness when the Incarnate Son
ascended into heaven, and sent down the Holy Ghost
upon His Church. We, then, lack nothing that they
enjoyed; we have all, and more; they had but the
forerunning lights of the morning, we have the day-
spring and the noontide of grace and truth.

The fulness of the kingdom of Faith, which we have
received, consists of three divine gifts, greater than all
ever bestowed before upon mankind.

First: we have, for the foundation of our faith, an
infallible testimony. If they had certainty, we have
even more. We have their own testimony, the cer-
tainty of those who saw and spoke with the Lord
Jesus after He rose from the dead. Their testimony
is not passed away, but is now living, fresh, and stead-
fast. We have the testimony of Mary and the women
who were with her, of Cleophas and of his fellow ;
of the Disciples who believed, and of Thomas who
doubted. His doubting, as St. Gregory teaches, avails
us more than their belief. It is a double certainty, and
* Beb.,i, 1.

204 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

a countersign of their witness. We have, moreover,
not their faith alone, but the witness of all nations who
by the word of the Apostles believed in the kingdom
of Jesus Christ. The whole earth from the rising to
the setting of the sun, became one world-wide testi-
mony to the advent of the Word made flesh. It was a
supernatural expansion of the attestation of the chosen
witnesses who saw Him in the forty days before He
ascended to His Father's throne. The whole earth re-
sponded to the message of God, and became as it were
the eye-witness and ear- witness of the resurrection of
Jesus. And yet more, we have not only the testimony
of all nations at that day, but of all ages, from the
morning when He rose again until this hour. The
universal voice of Christendom, from generation to ge-
neration, has handed on this supernatural fact, with an
evidence which expands and multiplies itself as time
runs on. Every martyrdom is a seal set to the word
of Jesus; every act of faith, of hope, of charity, all
the energies and achievements of confessors, the deeds
and patience of saints in every age, — are so many
attestations and signatures upon the great record of
truth. And God makes even the unwilling to serve
Him ; for the whole weight of human history, like the
soldiers who kept the sepulchre, adds its testimony to
the faith of the Church of God. And yet people ob-

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 205

ject, and say, that the disciples saw our Lord, but we
only hear; that they had the evidence of their very
senses, we have never seen nor heard Him. What is
this, at last, but a low and animal philosophy ? Sense
is not our surest instrument of knowledge. Nay, it
is the lowest, the narrowest, and in some matters the
most easily deceived. For what is sense but the me- /
dium through which we converse with this visible and *
lower world; with its phenomena, its motions, its ope-
rations, and its changes ? The sphere and ken of sense
is scanty and limited ; it reaches only to the outer sur-
face, beyond which sense cannot penetrate. Sense
needs the reason to be its interpreter and guide ; for,
with all its confidence, sense is blind. Without the
higher light of reason, the laws, principles, causes, and
condition of all it sees, handles, and knows, are un-
known. And yet the reason in its sphere is bounded
too. A world of intellectual objects, the phenomena
of a higher, but not the highest sphere, are within its
ken. The Unseen and the Eternal , are beyond its
gaze ; and of these, except by another faculty higher
than sense or reason, supernatural in its substance and
its acts, which comes in to perfect both, we know no-
thing. It is not by sense nor by reason, but by faith,
elevating both, that the truths of the kingdom of God (
are known and believed. We read this in every page

206 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

of the gospels. The Jews went by sense. They saw
Jesus, and believed Him to be a man like themselves:
" Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and
mother we know? how then saith He, I came down
from heaven?"* Nicodemus added reason to sense,'
and perceived that the mission of Jesus was divine:
" We know that Thou art a Teacher come from God ;
for no man can do these signs which Thou doest
except God be with him."| But he could ascend
no further; reason had touched its bound. Peter
could say, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living
God ;"t because flesh and blood had not revealed it
unto him ; neither human sense nor natural reason, but
the Father who is in Heaven. It was by faith that
he saw, knew, and confessed the Godhead and Son-
ship of his Master. So with those who saw Him after
He rose from the dead ; they did not see the true and
divine object of their faith. Thomas, as St. Gregory
says, saw His manhood and confessed His Godhead.
The testimony of sense was but the motive to believe,
the footing by which he rose upward by faith to truth.
So it is now with us. What the visible manhood and
presence of Jesus was to Thomas, the visible form of
His mystical body manifest upon earth is to us. We
too, see His presence visible in the Church, and confess

* St. John, vl, 42. t St. John, Hi, 2. J St. Matt, xvi, 16.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 207

and adore His Godhead. This is the true and formal
object of our faith, which is surer than all sense,
higher than all reason, perfecting both. Faith has a
certainty of its own above all other kinds ; above the
certainty of science, different in its nature, loftier in
its reach, deeper in its conviction ; for it unites the
reason of man with God, the eternal changeless truth.
But again : we have not only an outer testimony ;
we have an inward witness beyond all that was ever
bestowed on man before the day of Pentecost, — the
full illumination of the kingdom of God. Before the
ascension of our Divine Lord, we read that even Apos-
tles knew not the Scriptures. Cleophas and his fellow
" hoped that it was He that should have redeemed
Israel ;"* and the eleven, at the hour of His ascension,
asked, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the
kingdom to Israel?"! They knew Christ after the
flesh, and their faith was as yet obscure. Therefore
our Lord said to them, " It is expedient to you that I
go ;"J for you the withdrawal of my visible presence
is needful. u For if I go not, the Paraclete will not
come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you;
and when He is come, He will teach you all things,
and bring all things to your mind."§ " The spirit of

* St. Luke, xxiv, 21. f -4rts, i, 6.

J St. Jvhn, xvi, 7- § St. John, xiv, 26.

208 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

truth shall be with you and in you" for ever. And on
the day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost fell upon them,
and His illumination filled their inmost soul: their
whole intelligence was enlightened, a fountain of light
sprang up from within, and truths already known
were unfolded with new and deeper meanings.
They saw the full mystery of the kingdom of God,
of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ;
of the love of the Father in the gift of His Son, of
the Son in giving Himself to be made man to suffer
and to die; of the Holy Ghost, who was already
upon them, and within them. They perceived that
their Divine Master had ascended to sit down upon
His Father's throne, crowned with power, to possess
His kingdom; and the whole earth to them was
I lightened with His glory. "The true light which
enlighteneth every man that cometh into this
world,"* was revealed. A greater light from above
fell upon the lesser light of nature, and the ciphers
and characters of truth inscribed upon this visible
world were interpreted with an unknown and divine
meaning. The witness of creation ascended into a
full revelation of the glory and the Godhead of the
Blessed Three, the Holy One, Eternal ; and this light
is steadfast and changeless until now. It fills the whole

* St. John, i, 9.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 209

world. It ante-dates all argument. It proposes the
revelation of God to all who are within the name and
sphere of Christendom : and is the evidence of what
it proposes.

The knowledge of God in Christ has taken its place
among the immediate perceptions of our intelligence.
It comes to us before we seek it. We have the con-
clusion before the reasons ; and our intellectual acts
are but as a logkal analysis and ordering of the proofs
which both in nature and in grace God has given
us of Himself. From the earliest use of reason even
the unbelieving sceptic receives a knowledge of God
and of His law, which, without revelation, he could
never obtain. By his own argument or out of his
own consciousness, he could never evolve it. With
the light of revelation he despises revelation ; and is
the subject of it whether he will or no. So, too, the
heretic, and they who will believe only fragments of
truth. All the light they have, in which to criticise
and weigh and pronounce upon the doctrines of the
faith, they derive involuntarily and unconsciously from
the illumination in which they are encompassed. In
faithful hearts, this effusion of light generates the spi-
ritual consciousness of things unseen and divine which
springs up with faith. The whole intelligence is ele-
vated to the supernatural order, in which the mysteries

14

2 1 0 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

of the kingdom of God are principles, axioms, truths,
self-evident and manifest in their own immediate
light; " for God, who commanded the light to shine
out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ."*

But once more : we have received not only a witness
in the reason, but a testimony in the heart. When our
Lord had ascended up on high, He shed abroad the gifts
of the Holy Ghost, the uncreated charity of God into
our hearts. As He promised in Jerusalem, " If any man
thirst, let him come to Me and drink." " He that be-
lieveth in Me, as the Scripture saith, out. of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water. Now this He said,
(writes the Evangelist) of the Spirit, which they should
receive who believed in Him ; for as yet the Spirit
was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.''!
When, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost de-
scended, He came not only as a light to illuminate the
intelligence, but as charity, both to kindle the heart
and to inspire the will. The whole inward nature was
then elevated by the immediate operation of Superna-
tural Grace. The witness of faith is countersigned by
a testimony within. " The Spirit Himself giveth tes-
timony to our spirit that we are the sons of God.'t

* II Cor., iv, 6. t St. John, vii, 37-39. J Rom., viii, 16.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 2 I 1

61 He that believeth in the Son of God hath the testi-
mony of God in Himself."* *And this Divine gift of
uncreated charity, by which the faithful are made per-
fect, has descended through the Church unto this hour.
We know Him, by an inward perception of the heart,
to be our kinsman in the supernatural consanguinity
of the Incarnation, our Brother by participation of
flesh and blood, our Lord Incarnate and our God.
u Blessed are they who have not seen, and have be-
lieved ;" who live amidst the divine manifestations of
the Word made flesh ; blessed, because sight and sense
no longer prompt their faith, but a glad readiness to
believe, which springs from a loving heart, and a will
conformed to the will of God. Blessed, because any
act of faith springing from a free and fervent will, me-
rits, in the sight of our Heavenly Father, according to
the measure in which it is generous and confiding. It
draws down from Him larger infusions of His graces,
and shall win a brighter crown and a more abundant
measure of reward in the kingdom of eternal life. If
such is our state, what hinders faith in us? Nothing
on God's part; He has done all for us, and more than
for those whose names of old were in the roll of the
faithful. Truth and grace, both without us and within,
are abundantly vouchsafed. Where, then, is the hind-

* St. John, v, 1 0.

2 1 2 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

ranee ? Not on the part of our intelligence, which has
motives and testimonies sufficient beyond measure to
awaken and to generate faith. Where, then, can the
hindrance be found, but where it was in Thomas, in
the will: " I will not believe." There is some bribe'
which makes us partial, some end out of sight, some
hope, or fear, or pledge, lying as it were under the
horizon, which, like a loadstone, makes us untrue to
truth and to ourselves. Though truth were resplen-
dent as the sun in Heaven, yet it is as a sackcloth of
hair to those who will not see. I do not now speak
of the more gross and poisonous sins, which deaden
the inward sight, and dull the ear of the heart, but of
more refined and subtle sins of the spirit and of the
will. Love of the world, a craving after honour, fear
of man, the influence of a position, or social relations ;
over- attachment to home and friends; self-trust, self-
will, a spirit of criticism ; or that deepest of mysteries,
a warp in the will itself, of which no human eye can
find the cause, — all these will hinder faith, even in
the full light of truth. As our Lord has said, " How
can you believe, who receive glory one from another ;
and the glory which is from God alone you do not
seek ?"* And to the young man, whom when He saw
He loved, Jesus said : u One thing is wanting unto

* St. John, v, 44.

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 2 1 3

thee. Go, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and
come, follow Me : who, being struck sad at that say-
ing, went away sorrowful, for he had great posses-
sions."* If, then, we would believe with Thomas, we
must overcome and cast out self ; for " with the
heart we believe unto justice."

There are two things that God loves, simplicity and
sincerity. Simplicity, which has no double or fold,
but is open and truthful; sincerity, which has no mix-
ture of self and second thoughts, but is clear and trans-
parent as the light. " The light of thy body is thy
eye ; if thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be
lightsome ; if thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be
darksome; if, then, the light that is in thee be dark-
ness, the darkness itself how great shall it be !"f Again,
if we would cast out self, we must correspond with the
grace we have already received. God waits for the
will of man; not the natural will, which is impotent
to elicit supernatural acts, but for the will already ele-
vated by grace to the power of corresponding with
the will of God. " Behold, I stand at the gate and
knock : if any man shall hear My voice, and open to
Me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he
with me."t And as the Church in Council has said :
* St. Mark, x, 21, 22. t St. Matt., vi, 22, 23. J Apoc., iii, 20.

2 1 4 THE CEPwTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

" Not a moment passes but God stands at the gate and
knocks." The whole life of faith is a chain of these
deliberate acts ; each one of which is done by the
power of grace ; and as grace is used, it is by the mercy
and gift of God perpetually increased, until the whole
heart of man is cleared of self, and filled only with
the presence and mind of Christ. What greatness and
what grandeur of soul in those who live no more unto
themselves, but in and to Christ alone; how vast in
aim, how fruitful in works, how enduring in perse-
verance! When Christ is formed in the heart, and
faith is made perfect in charity, the whole soul is His
to live and to die. Do we ask for an example of such
faith to-day? We need not go far to find it. Here,
on this very spot, was one whose whole life and its
achievements bear witness to the power of faith. In
this, the home of his patrician forefathers, though
young in years yet ripe in heart, he lived in honour
and splendour, invested with the highest civic digni-
ties; he sat chief in the capitol and the basilica, and
walked abroad with the insigniaof rule through the city
and the forum. But the heart of Gregory was weaned
within him from all earthly pomp ; he had seen by
faith the glory of the eternal world ; and this had lost
its brightness. By one act of faith all was laid aside
for Christ, and his palace became the house of religious

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 215

brethren. All around us are the tokens of his memory;
the chamber where he rested, the chair in which he
taught ; and here, under the oaks which shadowed the
Coelian Hill, he meditated upon eternity and God.
Another voice than mine, still fresh in your memories,
has told you what it was that wakened in his heart the
desire to win to Christ an island on the outskirts of the
world, deep in the northern seas. As he mused, the
fire which Jesus came to send upon the earth kindled
within him. He offered himself to bear the word of
life to the Saxon people. His sacrifice, like that of the
Patriarch of old, was accepted. For three days he
journeyed forth a wayfarer towards Britain; when his
self-oblation was complete, the hand of God turned
him back again to Rome. Gregory was not chosen to
be the apostle ; the time of grace for England was not
yet come. Long years were yet to pass ; he was to be
forced from his haven of peace, immersed in public
cares ; wafted beyondthe Adriatic, longto dwell in the
imperial city on the shores of the Bosphorus. Long
years again were yet to run ere he should return to the
peace of his home upon the Coelian. At last Gregory
ruled the Church of God, and the time for the long-
sown seed to spring was come. Then, from this very
hill, Augustine went forth with the companions of his
glorious embassy. You need not, brethren, that I

216 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

should recount what all know so well. Beautiful upon
the white shores of Britain were the feet of those that
preached the glad tidings of the heavenly kingdom.
Beautiful upon the bleak eastern coast of Thanet was
the long array, as an army with banners, which with
solemn chant followed the silver cross and the pic-
tured form of the Son of God into the presence of the
King of Kent. But Ethelbert and Bertha, and Thanet
and Canterbury, are familiar names. The work of
Gregory in England was begun ; its growth was rapid,
and its fruitf ulness divine. Ages flew past, and Bishops
ruled in Canterbury, and Rochester, and London, and
York, and Lincoln, and Lichfield, and Dorchester,
and Selsey, names dear to memory, though the Church
of God knows them now no more. And from Glas-
tonbury and Southwell, and Ripon and Hexham, and
Westminster, matins and vespers ascended morning
and evening before the eternal throne. The kingdoms
of Kent and Mercia, and Northumberland, the Saxons
of the east, and of the west, and of the south, ever in
warfare until now, laid down their weapons, and came
into the kingdom of God. The kings of the seven
peoples brought their honour and glory into the city
of the Lamb. The history of England, Saxon and
Catholic, as it comes down to us in the pages of St.
Bede, is like a tradition of Paradise. And yet he

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 217

wrote of it, not as we see it now, through the dimness
and softness of ages, but living before his eyes. For
sweetness, saintliness, and beauty not of this earth,
there is nothing nobler or more touching in the annals
of the Church of God. In union with the universal
kingdom of Christ, and under the rule of the See
of Peter, England was encompassed with the com-
munion of Saints; and the very course of nature
seemed to be supernatural.

For kings it had saints. St. Oswald and St. Oswin,
St. Edward and St. Edmund, are numbered among the
martyrs ; St. Edwin and St. Edward among confessors,
and of its royal blood many more beside. Among
its pastors, St. S within, St. Erconwald, St. Elphege,
St. Wilfred, St. Chad, and a roll too many to be
named, are among the Saints of God. The very soil
was consecrated by names and by memories sweet and
imperishable. They are upon it to this day, the house-
hold words of England. Such was the work of
Gregory, as yet in its freshness and its childhood. It
had a manhood yet to come ; an age rude and mighty,
a time of monarchy and of splendour, of higher civili-
zation and riper culture ; when the Normans ruled in
England, and its prelates, its princes, its statesmen, and
its doctors, were in renown through the courts and
universities of Europe. But saints waxed few, and

2 1 8 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

the martyrs and confessors of England, St. Anselm and
St. Thomas, St. Edmund, and St. Richard, won their
crowns in conflict with princes who ruled from the
thrones of St. Edmund and St. Edward. The times
were already out of course, and for ages there might
be seen growing up the causes of some fatal struggle.
At last it came. Out broke the great revolt ; a time
of which I need say little now. It is vividly before
the minds of all. The spirit of faith had departed, and
the spirit of doubt, with twelve legions of his angels,
entered in ; then came forth once more martyrs and
confessors as in days of old. The bishops of the flock
were thrust rudely from their thrones. God's priests
were exiled, or hunted down and slain ; the flock was
driven or misled into strange pastures. Faith was
turned into the jangling of controversy, and the sweet
and solemn ritual was marred and dishonoured. The
light before the tabernacle was put out, and the
tabernacle rudely tumbled from the altar; the altar,
stone by stone, was broken down. And all this because
the Real Presence had departed; while the disputer
and the doubter kept on their loud debate: u Except I
shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put
my finger into the place of the nails, I will not
believe." Truly, it has come to pass, for with faith in
the Sacramental Presence of the Word made flesh has

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 2 1 9

well nigh departed also faith in the Incarnation of the
Eternal Son. Many deny it ; still more live as if they
did not believe it ; and even to those who profess it,
a cold dim haze hangs between them and the divine
Manhood and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. England
was lost to the Church of God.

Is then the work of Gregory come to nought?
And has the malice of man prevailed against it? No,
it has not perished. I shall seem, perhaps, to speak
at random if I say it is greater now than ever. Yet it
is the very truth. Gregory's work is vaster, and more
widely spread, than in all ages past. It was not with-
out design that when England revolted from the faith,
Ireland and Scotland made its speech their own.
They have again entered, as of old, to restore the faith
of England, and to mingle with its people. God in
His inscrutable wisdom has twice replenished our land
by faithful of another race. The Catholic Church of
Britain and of the British Empire preaches the word
of life throughout the world. The world is full of
its missions; the Saxon people for two centuries
have been in perpetual migration throughout the
earth. They have peopled Northern America along
both its coasts ; they are in its boundless centre ; the
shores of India, the islands of the west and of the
south, are their home. St. Gregory at this hour

220 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

has more sons in the faith than all who peopled all
England before it revolted from the Holy See; the
hierarchy of St. Augustine has reproduced itself five-
fold beyond the number of the sees which schism rent
away. The dispersion of the English race, like the
scattering of the Greek and of the Roman in old time,
is beyond doubt a prelude of some mightier movement
in the earth than the world as yet has seen. What
maybe hereafter we know not ; for the future who can
tell ? Prophecy is not ours, but work and faith. And
yet we may discern the signs of the earth and of the
sky. And all point to one expectation, to some vaster
sway of empire than any known to history. Who can-
not see, at least, the outlines of the future in the tide of
civilization which is now setting in full stream towards
Central America, where the Mississippi pours its
mighty waters through valleys boundless in vastness
and fertility, washing the walls of cities which may one
day be the capitals of the West ? Under the southern
stars, in the continent of Australia, the foundations of a
power are being laid which may one day rule the East.
Who can foresee into how many kingdoms and empires
the colonies of England and the States of America, as
ripe seeds cast from the parent tree, may hereafter
spring? And already the Catholic Church has mea-
sured these vast foundations, and laid the corner-stones

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 221

of an hierarchy which shall embrace the world. Al-
ready, too, the sons of St. Ignatius and St. Alphonsus,
the sons and daughters of St. Vincent, and others
without number of every spiritual family in the Church,
are pushing onward in their provident charity even
beyond the bounds of civilization. America will not
refuse St. Augustine as its apostle, or St. Gregory as
its patriarch in the kingdom of God. Whence sprung
this world- wide mission of Anglo-Saxon faith, but from
the fervent heart which mused upon the Ccelian Mount ?
It was even here that the soul of Gregory, emptied of
self, and full only of the mind of Jesus, conceived
the purpose which has borne so mighty a growth.

It is good for us to be here. We are met around
the fountains of our faith. The Saxons of the slave-
market are become the people of God. They are here
this day to continue the work which St. Gregory
began. The primate of the Anglo-Saxon Church is
here ; the true successor and the rightful heir of St.
A ugustine's pall. And he is here to bless a spiritual
head and father over one among the families sprung
from the lineage of St, Benedict. Into his hands has
been delivered the rule, the same in its letter as some
contend, the very same in its substance as all know,
with the rule which Gregory obeyed in this sacred
place. Around the primate of the Church in England

222 THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH.

are here gathered a number of its priesthood and of its
faithful ; and a band of young ardent spirits sprung
from Saxon blood, who are here to kindle their manly
zeal at the ashes of the Apostles, and to form their
high resolves where Gregory sacrificed, and the names
of Augustine, Mellitus, and Justus speak from the
cloister-wall. Gregory is still living and giving life.
Twelve centuries have passed away, but the work of
faith has not passed away. Saxon England is gone,
and Norman England is no more. The monarchy of
France has changed and vanished; the empires of the
east and of the west have gone their way; the powers
of Europe have been moulded and remoulded once
and again ; but the Church of God stands firm, the
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the symbol and
partaker of the immutability of its Divine Head. O
imperishable Church of God ! on whom time falls
light, over whom man has no power ; whence is this
undying life? On thy part it is the presence of the
Incarnate Word; on ours it is a faith that knows no
doubt. This is what England needs; not wealth,
not intellect, not power (though all be good because
gifts of God,) but the supernatural grace of faith.
Purify our hearts, pluck up every root and fibre of
self, and fill us with Thine own unchanging Presence.
Lord, we ask not to see the print of the nails. We

THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE FAITH. 223

have Thy five Sacred Wounds, through which, hour
by hour, all grace descends from the Eternal Father ;
through which all our prayers and hopes ascend to
Him again. We ask not to put our hand into Thy
side. We have Thy Sacred Heart, Thy Love divine
in the sympathies of our manhood, ever open to us,
the object of our worship, the pattern of our life, the
fountain of all grace. We believe; for Thou art
our Lord and our God.

VI.
STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF ST. ISIDORE, ROME, ON THE

FEAST OF ST. PATRICK,

1857.

15

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

" We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency
may be of the power of God, and not of us." — II Cor., iv, 7-

IN the lives of the servants of God two things are
especially wonderful, — their personal weakness and
the vastness of their works.

We see this in the founders of the religious orders ;
as, for example, in St. Benedict, who fled in early youth
from the tainting atmosphere of Rome, then in the
later stages of corruption, and in a cave of the Apen-
nines, " habitabat secum,"* dwelt alone, nurturing his
soul in communion with God ; and so became the
patriarch of a great spiritual family, which has given
civilization and Christianity to many nations, a line of
Pontiffs to the Holy See, and to the Church a multi-
tude of souls. Again, St. Dominic seemed to be
raised up all alone in an age when the intellect of
Christian nations had become perverse, to give to Faith
its scientific form, and to build up the wondrous intel-
lectual structure of Theology, which received its ful-
ness and symmetry in the Angel of the Schools ; and
* St. Greg. M. in vita S. Bened.

228 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

once more, a young Spanish soldier, wounded and cast
aside, whose energetic will kindled in secret, creates
in due time the body which has taking up the living
thread of sacred science, wrought before by Benedic-
tines and Dominicans, and placed itself in the front
of the conflict with the world. The Society of Jesus
stands as a conductor of storms, on which the first
bursts of sedition and of heresy invariably fall.

How feeble the instruments of these great achieve-
ments ! how vast their works ! The same is true also
of the apostles of nations in the later agesof the Church,
of St. Wilfred, St. Augustine, St.Sigfrid, St. Adelbert,
and many men, who, through the dimness of history,
are seen to shine with the luminous army of Evange-
lisis: in themselves how weak, solitary, and isolated;
yet in their deeds how enduring, fruitful, and glorious !

And if we ascend higher to the outset of the Church,
we discover the same law of supernatural grace. When
God would set up His kingdom on theEarth, we should
have expected that some mightier weapons would have
been arrayed against the world. For four thousand
years the power of natural society had consolidated
itself. It had grown by successive increase and per-
petual expansion into the imperial sway of Rome,
which summed up all the powers upon Earth, and
ruled the world. It was bound together by all the

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 229

uonds of paganism, by religious sympathies, by super-
stitions, and by the intellectual traditions and philoso-
phies of all ages. To clear the Earth of such an
antagonist, and to sweep the site for the foundation of
the kingdom of God, we might have looked for twelve
legions of angels to purge the Earth with their pre-
sence, and to cleanse it so as by fire : or, at least, that
supernatural messengers or evangelists from Heaven
should have proclaimed the kingdom of God, and that
the air should have been charged with voices and
visions from on high. But not so. Twelve poor men,
some from the sea, and some from the shade of the fig-
tree ; some from their boats and nets, and some from
the receipt of custom — these were the ministers of
God's kingdom, and by them He overcame the world.
The vessel was of earth, but the treasure from above.
And throughout the history of the Church the same
phenomenon is ever reproduced. It is ever weaker
than the world, yet ever overcoming the world; and
the support of the Church seems ever failing, yet
always surviving ; the See of Peter, the long single
line of Pontiffs, always at the point of death, yet
never extinct. From age to age the will of one man,
without weapons or worldly power, subdued the world.
What is the secret of this all- conquering weakness
but what the apostle has said: "We have this treasure

230 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the
power of God and not of us?"

In the chapter going before he explains what is this
treasure, namely, the ministration of the Spirit.*

In these words we have a parallel between the min-
istration of death and the ministration of the Spirit: the
ministration of condemnation and the ministration of
justice: the ministration which was transient and the
ministration which is abiding : that is, the ministration
of the law before the Incarnation of the Son of God,
and the ministration of the Spirit after the descent
of the Holy Ghost. The apostle, in this place as in
others, contrasts the Pentecost on Mount Sinai with
the Pentecost on Mount Sion : the giving of the Law
and the outpouring of the Spirit of God.

We have here, then, the secret of the mighty strength
of the servants of God. They were partakers of this
ministration of the Spirit and the vessels of an Heavenly
treasure. " Therefore seeing we have received this
ministration . . . we faint not." They were the messen-
gers and ministers of the Spirit of God : their mission
and message were alike from God, divine and unerring.
Therefore, they fainted not: no shade of doubt could
overcast their clear insight of the truth : no fears dis-
quiet their heart : no slackness undo the energy of their
* II Cor., Hi, 7-11.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 231

will. They were penetrated through and through with a
consciousness thatGod had sent them to His own work,
and that no man could stand before Him, and prevail.

And therefore also their work was supernatural in
vastness, fruitfulness, and imperishableness, because
the excellency was of the power of God and not of
themselves.

And what, in one word, is this but to say, that they
were members of a body which is divine, and messen-
gers of a Teacher who is infallible? And these divine
endowments, what are they but the fruits and gifts of
the Holy Spirit under whose ministration we now are ?

We will therefore trace the power of the servants
of God up to its Heavenly fountain, and dwell
awhile upon this last dispensation of grace, the
ministry of the Holy Ghost.

In what then does it consist? In two great and
divine facts. First, in the Presence of the Holy
Spirit, and secondly, in the offices which on the day
of Pentecost He assumed in the world.

Now faith in the Holy Trinity, in whose Name we
are baptized, contains in itself, and demands of us, a
right faith in the office of the Holy Spirit.

And from a right faith in the office of the Holy
Spirit, one direct and inseparable consequence is
faith in the infallibility of the Church.

232 STEENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

So that they who deny, or in any way disbelieve the
infallibility of the Church, whether they will or no,
whether they know it or no, inevitably deny or dis-
believe in whole or in part the office of the Holy Spirit.

And they who fail in their faith in the office of the
Holy Spirit, inevitably forfeit the divine freedom
which our Lord has purchased for the human intelli-
gence through His most precious Blood: and forfeit-
ing this divine freedom, they fall under the authority
and into a bondage of human teachers.

The truth of this we may clearly see by consider-
ing one or two of the most obvious principles of the
dispensation of grace.

1. As first, that the office which was assumed by
the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is perpetual.
He took to Himself a royal office in the kingdom of
God, of which the power and prerogatives in all its
parts and functions are indefeasible, and continue in
their freshness to this hour.

To doubt the perpetuity of this office is to dis-
believe the ministration of the Spirit. To imagine
that He is shorn of His prerogatives, and that His
powers are suspended, is to fall back into the imper-
fect and transitory dispensations of the ages before
the Spirit of God descended among men, or the Sen
of God was as yet incarnate.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 233

The perpetuity of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit
is shadowed forth in the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
There are reasons in the analogy of faith, which, if
express proof in words were wanting, would suffice.

Within the abyss of the Eternal Godhead the Holy
Ghost is "the Term," "the Unity," "the Fellowship,"*
"the Indissoluble Bond,"f and " Final Rest" of the
Father and the Son. The mystery of the Divine
Trinity has its perfection in itself in the third and
last Person of the ever blessed Three. So also in the
outward operations of God. A Saint to whom the
Church, for his profound intuition into the mysteries
of the Godhead, has given the title of Theologus,
Gregory of Nazianzum, describes the Three Persons
of the Holy Trinity as " the First Cause, the Creator,
and the Perfecter."

We see this in creation. When the Father willed
to create, it was by the Son that He made the
world :J and " the Spirit of God moved over the
waters,"§ to order, dispose, perfect, quicken, and
give perpetuity to all things.

When the fulness of time was come that the world
should be redeemed, the Father sent the Son into the
world ; the Son assumed our manhood, the Holy Ghost

* St. Augustine. f St. Bernard.

| St. John, i, 3. Beb., i, 2. § Gen., i, 2.

234 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

overshadowed the Mother of the Eternal. He " was
conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin
Mary."

When the time was come that the Incarnate Son
should return to the Father, the work He had begun
on Earth was bequeathed to the Spirit of the Father
and the Son. What the Second Person began, the
Third Person continued. The earthly ministration
of the Son terminated at the Ascension: the earthly
ministration of the Spirit began from the day of Pen-
tecost. The Son departed, the Spirit came. " It is
expedient to you that I should go : for if I go not, the
Paraclete will not come."* How could the Spirit of God,
who already in the beginning moved upon the waters,
come into the world? And if already in the world,
how could He come any more ? But was not the Son
already in the world, for by Him even the world was
made, and yet did He not, after four thousand years,
come into the wrorld ? He came in a new manner :
and for a new purpose : He came by incarnation : He
came in the natural body of our manhood. It was a
true advent, even though in other ways he was already
here. So also the Spirit of God, after the Incarnate
Son ascended, came into the world. He came in a
new manner : He came for a new purpose : He came

* St. John, xvi, 7.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 235

in a mystical body : as personally and as visibly as the
Son : though after another manner and in another
form. The Holy Spirit is in the world now manifest
in the Church, as the Eternal Son was in Jerusalem
then manifest in the flesh. He is come to take up
and to carry on to the end of the world the dispen-
sation of grace. The Perfecter is now in the world
to finish the work of the kingdom of God.

And of this perpetual office we have the express
promise of our Lord. " I will ask the Father, and He
shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide
with you for ever."* Another when I am gone: not
like me to go away but to abide for ever. If I stay,
He will not come. If I go, He will be with you and
for ever.

And does it not stand to reason in itself ? The Spirit
of Jesus is here to accomplish a perpetual work ; to
carry on a dispensation of grace which must last until
the end of the world, until the whole number of God's
elect gathered out from the successive generations of
mankind be full. He came, not to gather in from the
first ages only, and then to depart, but to abide, mov-
ing over the waters, in all ages of time, from the As-
cension to the second coming of the Son. A perpetual
work demands a perpetual office and a perpetual ope-
* St. John, xiv, 16.

236 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

ration. And a perpetual work demands also a perpe-
tuity in the means of its accomplishment. But what
are the means whereby He fulfils " the perfecting of
the Saints, the work of the ministry, the edifying of
the body of Christ?" The same are needed in all
ages, and at this hour as in the beginning. " He shall
teach you all things, and bring all things to your re-
membrance, whatever I shall have said unto you."*
" When He, the Apostle of Truth, is come, He will
teach you all truth. For He shall not speak of Him-
self: but what things soever He shall hear He shall
speak: and the things that are to come He shall
show you."f " He shall receive of mine and shall
share it unto you." What are the means whereby the
Elect of God are made perfect but grace and truth ?
and the work of sanctifying and illuminating is as
perpetual as the chain of the Elect, which, through
the succession of time, runs down from the beginning
until now, and shall be found unbroken at the con-
summation of the world.

The whole office, therefore, of the Holy Spirit is
as perpetual and indispensable as His presence. All
the power and prerogatives wherewith He was in-
vested on the day of Pentecost, are in vigour, energy,
and operation until this hour. He has abdicated none.

* St. John, xiv, 26. t St. John, xvi, 13.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 237

He can be deprived of nothing. From the hour when,
in the upper chamber, the Holy Spirit came down
upon the Church, the treasure abides in its fulness in
the earthen vessel. And as the preservation of the
world is the work of creation by the same omnipo-
tence perpetually produced, so the illumination of the
Church is the perpetual fulness of His inspiration,
which descended on it on the day of Pentecost.

2. The office, then, of the Holy Ghost in the Church
being perpetual in all the fulness of its prerogatives,
let us next see how it is discharged. That all who
are illuminated and sanctified, received their illumina-
tion and sanctification, one by one, from the Spirit
of God, all who believe in the Holy Trinity confess.
Moreover, all alike believe that the efficacy of the
office of the Holy Spirit in individuals, that is, their
illumination and sanctification, ultimately depends
upon the cooperation of the individual will, and is
therefore conditional.

The chief likeness of God in the soul of man is in
the will, by which both the intelligence and the affec-
tions find their expression. And the will in man,
being a divine gift, is so cherished and respected by
the Giver that He never forces it. Freedom of will is
the law of the Nature and of the Kingdom of God.
And there are two springs from which all voluntary

238 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

action flows: the uncreated will of God, which is the
principle and source of all divine operations, and the
created will in man, which is the principle and source
of all human volitions.

The fellowship of God and man is by the free union
of the will ; and the operations of grace are the influ-
ences and aids of the Spirit of God elevating and
perfecting the will of man.

St. Augustine therefore distinguishes the working
of grace into those graces which " God works in us
but without us : and those which He works in us but
with us." Those which God works in us but without
us, are the first gifts of preventing grace, without
which we are physically unable to serve God unto life
eternal. The gift of regeneration in children and in
adults, the first lights which fall on the intelligence,
the first drops of charity upon the heart, the first mo-
tions of impulse on the will, all these are wrought of
God's sovereign grace in us but without us. We offer
no cooperation, it may be, we have even no conscious-
ness, until the divine action is accomplished.

When this is wrought, then begins the operation of
those other graces which are wrought in us but with
us. When the will, already elevated to a supernatural
state, unites itself with the grace received, and acts in
union with it, there come down into the soul larger

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 239

effusions of grace to work with us; and the acts
which flow from this cooperation are both the gifts
of God and the works of man. Our freedom of
will is perfected by its elevation.

This then is the office of the Holy Spirit in indivi-
duals, to work in, and by, and through their freedom :
so that they are able either to consent or dissent
from His operations, to use or not to use His grace.

And by this test they shall be tried. This is the
touchstone of our probation. If we are willing we
may be illuminated and sanctified ; if we are not will-
ing, we may freely choose to be darkened and repro-
bate. If we consent to His invitations and attractions,
He will enter in and dwell with us, and unite us to
Himself. If we will not cooperate with Him, He will
depart, and leave us in the desolation and death which
we have freely chosen. He imposes on us no neces-
sity, no compulsion. The individual will is free, and
the benefits of the Holy Spirit in the soul are condi-
tional. If we will, we may make them to be our
own; if we will not, they will be withdrawn.

Such is the office of the Holy Spirit towards indivi-
duals : not so towards the Church. The union of the
Holy Ghost with the Church of Christ is not condi-
tional, but absolute. It depends not upon any created
will, but upon the Divine will alone. It is an union

240 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

not contingent upon the assent or dissent, the use or
abuse of grace on the part of man, but upon the
Divine economy of redemption through the Incarna-
tion of the Son of God. The Church is not an indi-
vidual, but a body — a mystical body, of which Christ
is head ; and amo ral person in which the head and
the body are eternally united. The union of the
Holy Spirit with the Church depends no more on any
human will than the union of the Godhead and man-
hood in the person of Jesus Christ. The hypostatic
union is a divine and eternal fact: so is the union of
the Holy Spirit with the Church.

Therefore St. Augustine says: " What the soul is
to the body of a man, the Holy Spirit is to the body
of Christ, which is the Church. And what the soul
fulfils in all the members of one body, the same the
Holy Spirit fulfils in the whole Church."* And St.
Irenseus, using the figure used by St. Paul, says,
speaking of the gift of faith, that it is a gift from the
Spirit of God, as a precious deposit in a good vessel,
always new, and always renewing the vessel itself in
which it exists. And this gift is entrusted to the
Church, as the breath of life was inspired into the first
man made of the earth, that all the members might be
quickened with life ; and in this deposit is given to us

* S. Aug. Serm. 2, feria 2, Pentecost.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 241

the communication of Christ, which is the Holy Ghost,
the earnest of incorruption, the confirmation of our
faith, and the ladder of ascent to God. "For in the
Church," he (St. Paul) says, " God hath set Apostles,
Prophets, Doctors, andall other operationsof the Spirit,
of which they are not partakers who come not to the
Church; defrauding themselves of life by an evil
mind and a worse practice. For where the Church is,
there also is the Spirit of God ; and where the Spirit
of God is, there is the Church and all grace: but the
Spirit is Truth."* This is the treasure in an earthen
vessel — the Spirit of God in the Church on Earth.
And the end for which this union and in-dwelling was
ordained is to bestow light and grace upon the world.
It is the light of the world — the u city seated on a
mountain which cannot be hid." As the solar system
was created to give light upon the Earth, and the fir-
mament stands changeless, fulfilling a perpetual office
to mankind, so the Church is the organ by which the
Holy Spirit speaks on Earth, and the vessel in which
the Heavenly light always burns in undiminished
splendour. It is as the light of the sun, which never
fails nor changes : though all men were blind, it would
pour forth its undiminished flood of light. And as
the ever blessed Sacrament upon the altar is divine,

* S. Iren. Contra Hcrr., lib. iii, cap. 24 at. 40.

16

242 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

though in the midst of the unbelieving and unworthy,
so the Church of God, which is the mystical body of
His Son and the organ of the Holy Spirit, stands
changeless from age to age, as full, luminous, and
changeless as on the day of Pentecost. It was
created to give light upon the Earth. It is the
greater light in which the lesser lights of nature
conspire and blend ; the true light which falls upon
the Earth from Him, " which enlighteneth every
man that cometh into the world."*

The Church, then, is not like an individual upon
probation, as if the endowments and prerogatives of
the Holy Spirit depended upon the will of man. It is
itself the instrument of probation to individuals. It is
through the Church that God confers His grace and
truth upon mankind ; and by the bestowal of grace
and truth that He tries us one by one. Like as the
visit of a prophet or an apostle was the time of proba-
tion to Jerusalem or to Corinth, or as the presence of
our Lord Himself was the probation of those who
heard Him, so now, in all the world, the one and uni-
versal Church speaks as a Teacher sent from God, lay-
ing the soul under the penalty of sin to believe in the
divine message. To every successive age, from the
day of Pentecost until now, the Spirit of God has
* St. John, i, 9.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 243

spoken, through the Church, as the organ of His
voice.

Such, then, being the office of the Holy Spirit to-
wards individuals and towards the Church, it follows
by inevitable consequence that they who deny the
infallibility of the Church, deny also the guidance of
the Holy Spirit; and therefore either in part or in
whole deny the office of the Third Person of the
ever blessed Trinity. I say in whole or in part, be-
cause there are two common forms of this error.

Some who are more consistent in their error, but
therefore farther from the truth, deny altogether the
infallibility of the Church, and claim for individuals
the guidance which they deny to the body. And yet
they dare not claim for individuals the gift of infalli-
bility, which, however, is inseparable from the guid-
ance of the Spirit, if by guidance be meant anything
beyond the universal aid given to all by the illumina-
tion of grace. This, then, is a full and direct denial
of the office of the Holy Spirit as the Life of the mysti-
cal body, to use the words of St. Augustine, of that part
of His office which is not conditional in its efficacy,
but absolute, and depends not on the will of man, but
on the will of God alone. It denies the union and
in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church as a
divine organ of grace and truth: it denies the moral

244 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

personality of the Church, and reduces it to a multi-
tude of individuals isolated and detached each from
the other. It denies also the divine institution of the
Church to be a medium and channel of grace and
truth to individuals: and inverts the whole order and
analogy of nature and of grace, as if life ascended
from the members to the body, instead of descending
from the body to the members. It is, in truth, a simple
unbelief in the ministration of the Spirit as it is dis-
tinguished, since the Incarnation of the Son of God
and the descent of the Holy Ghost, from the opera-
tions of the Holy Spirit under the law. It overthrows
the contrast of St. Paul between the ministration of
the letter and the ministration of the Spirit, and re-
duces the office of the Third Person of the Holy
Trinity to the measure of the days when as yet man
knew not " whether there were a Holy Ghost."*

Again, there are others nearer the truth, because
they deny less, and yet less consistent than those who
deny more. They say that for six hundred years the
Church was guided by the Holy Spirit; and therefore,
for those six hundred years the Church was infallible ;
that so long as it was united it could not err ; but that
by division its infallibility is suspended ; and until its
divisions be healed, will not be restored.

* Acts, xix, 2.

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 245

And yet, what is this but to deny the true office of
the Holy Spirit towards the Church, and to affirm
that the Church is upon probation, and that the pro-
perties and endowments of the Church, that is, the
power and prerogatives of the Holy Spirit, depend
upon the conditions of the will of man ? In truth, this
is to give with one hand and to take away with the
other : to seem to believe in the office of the Spirit,
to admit the Church as a moral person, divinely con-
stituted and guided, but all the while to believe only
in the conditional operations of the Spirit to individuals.
If the office of the Holy Spirit be in all its preroga-
tives and powers perpetual until now, how can any of
its functions be suspended by the sin of man ? The sin
of man may deprive himself, one by one, of the benefits
of illuminating and sanctifying grace : as each one may
close or blind his own eyes ; but nothing can dissolve
the union between the Holy 'Spirit and the Church,
except the Divine will alone : as none but He, who
made the lights of the firmament, can quench their
brightness. Either once infallible, always infallible ;
or once fallible, always fallible from the beginning.
It does not save this theory, to cast the blame upon
the sins of men : for, be the cause what it may, the
perpetuity of the office of the Holy Spirit in the
Church is thereby equally denied. And from this

246 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

what must follow but the reentrance of human
authority and human bondage, from which Christ died
to set us free. God made the intelligence in man for
Himself, and when He saw it in bondage to falsehood
and to the usurped authority of man, He redeemed it
by the precious blood of His Son. The human reason
is dear to God as a high participation of His own
likeness, and He claims it for His own, that being
taught by Him alone, the truth might make it free.
Everywhere and always from the beginning of the
world, except only when Patriarchs, Prophets, and
Seers, illuminated with Divine Truth, brought men
under the teaching and authority of God, mankind
has been in bondage to human teachers.

Such then is the divine certainty and the divine
freedom bestowed on those who are of the one only
Church of God. But I may not now further pursue
those thoughts. Another topic remains to illustrate
the words of the apostle.

We have before us to-day a great example of this
divine power in human infirmity in the great Saint
and Apostle of Ireland. Little thought he, that poor
stripling, over whose head sixteen summers had hardly
passed, when he was carried away into the land of his
captivity, that to him and to his spiritual seed it should
all be given for an inheritance, while as yet he had

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 247

not so much as to set the sole of his foot on. Little
he thought, on the waste shores and by the dark
woods of Ireland, as he tended the herds of a heathen
master, that he was the vessel, earthen indeed, but
chosen of God to bear the Heavenly treasure to a
whole people and to their posterity. And yet the
visitations of grace were upon him in the land of his
bondage. And, all weak and lone as he was, visions
of Heaven began to stir within him. There arose
before his spiritual sense myriads of little ones, with
hands uplifted as in prayer, imploring his assistance*
And this spectacle hung before him, and hovered
about him as a part of his very consciousness, till it
awakened a longing desire, which shaped itself into
a purpose and became a changeless resolution. Twice
captive and twice set free, yet nothing could restrain
him from returning of his own free will into the land
of his bondage. Neither love of kindred, nor the
mourning of friends, nor the tears of hearts, dear as
life, nor the opposition of those who blamed him, nor
the reproaches of those who cast his faults upon his
head ; no, nor the consciousness of his own un worthi-
ness could withstand the resistless love of souls. He
bid a sore and long farewell to all for his Master's sake,
and chose to live as a wanderer in a strange land for
love of the Heavenly kingdom. What was it then

248 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

that made him so mighty in the work of God ? It was
not intellectual powers, or refined culture, or natural
gifts : but, as any will see who read The Confessions of
Patrick the Sinner, it was that he was a saint, a citizen,
and a messenger of the supernatural order, and through
the gift of the Holy Ghost a man of God in will and
in deed. It was that his soul was all on fire with the
Spirit of God ; that the deepest love of his heart was
for the Cross of Jesus, for its sharpness and for its
shame; that he thirsted for humility, and desired
humiliation as the way to it. His own infirmities
were absorbed in a divine thought. And as he went
to and fro preaching the kingdom of God, all gave
way before him ; the power and virtue of the ministry
of the Spirit went with him. The face of the island
changed under his advance, and became the kingdom
of God and of His Church. And now from his
Master's throne what a history has he seen unrolled
in the fortunes and sufferings of Ireland.

But, brethren, I know not how I can fulfil the task to
which you have invited me. Not that I do not do your
bidding gladly, but that the most ardent words of a
stranger must fall coldly upon the hearts of sons of Ire-
land. It is rather the duty of children, not of strangers,
to staunch the wounds of a father, or to console a
mother's grief. And yet, perhaps, even as a stranger I

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. ^49

may better bear my witness to your fidelity, and may
with less suspicion of bias, speak of the generous, lov-
ing, pure-hearted, enduring children of St. Patrick.

But why do I say a stranger, for in Christ Jesus*
there is neither " Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian,
bond, nor free." When Judaism passed away, national-
ism became a heresy within the kingdom of God. It
is the mark of heresy to be national and local, as it is
of the one universal kingdom to know erf no distinction
of nations. They are absorbed in the unity of the true
kingdom. Where all are brethren, none are strangers.
If history be not a fable, the Ireland of St. Malachi
and St. Laurence was a home of faith. In times when
in great part of other lands, now Christian, paganism
and desolation reigned, Ireland had its saints ruling
their flocks ; its ordered hierarchy ; its schools of Chris-
tian science. Armagh, Lismore, Clonard, and other
seats of sacred study were known to Europe. And the
teachers of Ireland were held inhonour in Paris, Pavia,
and Bologna. St. Aidan, St. Kilian, St. Fursey, St
Fintan, St.Columba, and a multitude beside, shed their
light upon it. And the names of St. Gall, St. Donatus,
St. Finian, St. Frigidian, are upon the mountains of
Switzerland, upon the plains of Italy, and upon the
cities of the north. When I read of your history in
* Co/., Hi, 11.

250 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

those times deep in the past; when the image of your
fair island rises before me, rock-bound and lashed by
the mighty waters of the west, green within with living
verdure, with its blue mountains, its fruitful plains,
and exhaustless rivers, I seem to see some old picture,
such as is hung over the altars in our sanctuaries, in
which the skill of the painter is even less than the
sanctity of his idea. It is such as we often see, when
in the background there is a gentle landscape, bounded
by dark tranquil mountains, shaded by tall and spread-
ing trees, in the midst a calm water and clear bright
air; here is a company of Saints musing on Holy
Writ, and there a multitude of upturned faces drink-
ing in the words of an evangelist; on one side a
crowd by a river's brink receiving the sacrament of
regeneration ; on the other, the Holy Sacrifice of the
Altar is lifted up before the Eternal Father ; beyond
is a mystic ladder reaching up to Heaven, on which
angels are ascending and descending, and communing
with Saints in vision ; and in the foreground, rising
over all, is Jesus on His throne, and on His right
hand Mary crowned with light.

But this was to pass away. A rude and ruthless
age succeeded — an age of overthrow and uprooting, of
griefs and wrongs. The scourge which passed over
England a hundred years before was to pass over

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 25 1

Ireland too. It had fallen upon us before it fell on
you. The steel-clad heel had trodden down the Saxon
Church and the Saxon serf before it trampled on the
sons of Ireland. The Normans were everywhere the
same, but between us and you there was this diffe-
rence. The unity of the Church, which had reduced
to harmony the conflicting kingdoms of the Heptarchy,
fused also into one people the two races of conqueror
and conquered. Not so in Ireland. The conflict of
race against race was perpetuated even while the reli-
gion of both was the same. It was Catholic against
Catholic when the sorrows of Ireland began, when its
schools were closed, and the " merus Hibernus" was
thrust out of sacred offices and trusts. Long, bitter,
and widespread were its afflictions, but the vials of its
chastisement were not all poured out. There were
other drops of bitterness yet to fall upon it. To the
conflict of race against race was to be added the war-
fare of religion against religion. What, brethren, shall
I say of the last three hundred years of your history?
I do not desire to speak words which can rekindle fires
now wellnigh spent, or to renew a theme at which
the heart grows sick. But history is the witness of
truth, and the witness must speak in its season.

If Achitophel were called to counsel how best to
afflict a people, I conceive he would give some such
advice as this: —

252 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

Begin by violating all that a people considers sacred
to truth and to God. Dethrone their venerable pon-
tiffs; dishonour, banish, or slay their pastors; let the
priestcatcher be a known name of office ; break down
their altars, desecrate their sanctuaries, take away their
consecrated possessions, and give them over to teachers
who revile the faith of the people, and teach what
they count heresy ; let the bell, which once called
them morning by morning to the Holy Sacrifice, ring
at least once in the week to invite them to a worship
they turn from as mortal sin ; set it up by law in
their ancient sanctuaries; prohibit, under pain of
fine, prison, or death, the celebration of the religion
they believe and love. The religious instincts of a
people are of all the most keen and vivid. Set there
the first sting down to the quick.

Again, the true education and sphere of man is the
social and political order. It is in contact and con-
flict with public movements and courts, in sharing
the weal and woe of society, in weighing the rights
and wrongs of his fellows, in the open and arduous
career of honourable ambition, and the generous service
of their country, that men are formed, elevated, and
ennobled. If then you would enfeeble and undermine
the vigour of a people, close against them the paths of
public duty. Let the gifts of heart and soul stagnate

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 25 3

in obscurity ; and the energy of will, and high aspiring
of genius, rust in secret as a weapon cast aside : let the
moral and intellectual power of a people be exiled
from the paths and the sphere in which the providence
of God ordains their exercise and perfection ; and then
do not wonder if every form of intense and energetic
indignation should burn in the hearts of men, above
all, in those who, being, by the gifts of God, worthiest
to serve the society of their fellows, are therefore most
wronged by banishment to such an unnatural obscurity .

And yet this is not all. If public life be thus
turned to bitterness, private life yet might be secure.
Suppose its inmost fountains to be tainted. Let the
son be tempted to thrust the father from his lands by
forswearing his faith ; and the younger brother sup-
plant the first-born, and take away his birth-right;
and the wife to obtain by constraint of law a large
dowry by renouncing the religion of her husband.
Sow division among kindred, and society is breached
at its very base.

But this is not all that a people may endure. The
laws of the Maker and Giver of all good gifts have so
disposed that the social order should have its rise in
the soil beneath our feet. Society springs from the
furrow. The mother earth, on which man is born, is
not only his grave, but his inheritance and his home.

254 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

It was not without deep insight into truth that the
heathens of old placed among their divine benefactors
those who first taught men to cast wheat into the fal-
low. It is the toiling plough and hand of the sower
which makes the earth fruitful, and enriches the
home of the husbandman: and from the fruitful field
springs up the village, with the charities of a hundred
homes : from the village the town : from agriculture
the arts of life : the market, the artizan, the trader, and
the merchant, with their wealth: the gradations of
culture, intelligence, and social order: their laws,
mutual rights, common trusts, public tribunals, and
justice with its even scales. Such are the laws of
God written on the face of the earth, and administered
by His silent and ceaseless providence. Outlaw a
people from their operation, and the Author of those
unwritten sanctions will avenge it. The direst of
social scourges, endless and hopeless disorder, by in-
trinsic necessity of the thing will avenge the violation.
Society is of God : and they that invert its principles,
and thwart its expansion, fight against Him. What
wonder if the gifts of the earth and sky be neglected,
if for centuries the soil lie unbroken, and theundrained
waters stagnate, and sources of inexhaustible wealth
turn to poverty, ruin, indolence, apathy, discontent?
And if any people were so under the edges of afnic-

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 255

tion, would it be possible to make the edges sharper,
and the wounds more keen? Perhaps there remains
but one thing behind. The earthen vessel is bruised
indeed, but it has a heavenly treasure yet within.
In the time of its deepest poverty, when famine and
pestilence are upon its children, tempt them, through
the cravings of nature, through the pangs of hunger,
and the fever of thirst, and the shivering palsy of
nakedness, the cries of its children, wives, and
mothers, to sell its faith. This one gift it still has of
its own. Tempt father, mother, child, by bread and
clothing, to forsake God. Buy up its poor.

Disclaim all tampering with the consciences: and
without breathing the word, give food, raiment,
money, favour to those who will put themselves
under influences contrary to their faith. The work
may be done without seeming to do it; and tacit
understandings leave no evidences of the barter.

Do I then fear the protestantising of Ireland? No,
not a whit. We are told, indeed, by an arrogant
public voice, that u if this new Protestant Reformation
and the stream of emigrants hold on, the Celtic race
will be as forgotten in Ireland as the Phoenician in
Cornwall, and the religion of Rome as the worship of
Astarte." But I have no fear of this vaunting pro-
phecy. Fear indeed I have of the sins of hypocrisy,

256 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

falsehood, dissimulation, to which a people wasted
with poverty may be tempted. I fear the sins of
Simon Magus in many souls ; but the protestantising
of Ireland I fear no more than the restoration of the
Phoenician rites in Cornwall. And why? Simply
because from the hour that civil powers cease to
establish protestantism, protestantism has ceased to
spread. Without the civil power it has never con-
verted a nation. Catholic nations have been overrun
by infidelity, as in France, and have become Catholic
again : but of a Catholic nation becoming protestant
on free conviction there is no example. In the last
three hundred years, as protestant historians tell us,
" whatever has been lost to Catholicism has been lost
to Christianity, and whatever has been regained by
Christianity has been regained by Catholicism."

But this is not the only reason why we have no
need to fear. Great are the ways of God, and He
has taken the matter into His own hands.

About two centuries ago the Catholics of Ireland,
reduced by warfare and every form of suffering, were
driven before the sword into the province of Con-
naught. They were hemmed in as in a penal settle-
ment. Perhaps they were half a million. The
conquerors, it may be, were at least as many in
number. In less than a hundred years they had

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 257

outnumbered their rulers almost twofold. In ano-
ther hundred years they were sevenfold. And now
they are fivefold at least. Whence comes this
wonderful expansion of a nation but from the hand
of Him who multiplied His own people in Egypt?
No other than God Himself has wrought for them.
Thinned indeed they have been in these late years
fresh in our memory; and they who hope for the
protestantising of Ireland point to their diminished
numbers. But where are they now? Ask the roof-
less cabins which by the road-side make the traveller's
heart desolate ; ask the green homestead where the
voice of children a little while ago was heard ; ask
the cold hearth-stone round which father, mother,
and child were gathered but the other day; ask of
the fever, and ask of the famine, and they will tell
you that the anointed dead are in the green grave,
and their spirits are mighty intercessors before the
throne of God. They are joining in perpetual prayer
with their great Apostle for the benedictions of God
upon the land of their love ; for light and grace upon
those whose hand has lain heavy upon Ireland. Some
are in the world unseen, and the rest, where are they ?
They are throughout the world spreading abroad the
true faith of Jesus. They have gone forth not only

as emigrants, but as Crossbearers in every land. They

17

258 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

are in the townships of Canada, in the cities of the
United States, in the valley of the Mississippi, in the
forests of the West, in the islands of the West and of
the South, in the whole life and action of the new
societies which people Australia. They are nearer
home. In Scotland 'and in England, in the dense
population of Glasgow, in the heart of Liverpool,
and Manchester, and of London, in the very lifeblood
of manufacturing and middle-class England. There
is the remnant of Connaught, and there, too, is the
treasure of the earthen vessel; the Faith and the
Church of God. Where but yesterday there was a
handful, to-day they are by tens of thousands;
where, in the memory of man, a solitary pastor tended
a few scattered souls, now there rules a Bishop on
his spiritual throne, surrounded by the Priesthood of
a Diocese. It is the will of God, and wonderful.

If you look in History for the glory of Ireland,
you will not find it in the splendour of this world.
In its annals I do not read that Ireland has founded
empires, or planted colonies, or covered the sea with
its commerce, or sent forth fleets and armies ; but it
has a glory all its own, and a splendour of the world
of grace. Poor Ireland, rich in that treasure which
is from Heaven, poor in all besides, out of its deep
poverty in the last thirty years has built or rebuilt

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 259

ail its sanctuaries : churches, convents, schools, have
arisen all over the face of the land: within the
memory of the living, out of its faith it has produced
three religious Sisterhoods for works of mercy: it
has sent forth throughout the Empire of Great Bri-
tain a multitude of missionaries, greater in number,
perhaps, than is to be found of any other race. For
fidelity to its faith, for endurance of suffering, and
for purity of life, what nation can be set before
Ireland? This is its true glory — a glory of the
Kingdom of God, of which, it may be, its worldly
afflictions have been the necessary condition. Had
Ireland prospered in the natural order, like other
races, it might have fallen from the order of grace.
The earthen vessel has been bruised, that the excel-
lency may be of the power of God and not of us.

From this then we may learn what is the true con-
troversy of the Church against the world. It is not
a battle of words nor a strife of intellect, much less a
rivalry of political parties, but a deep inward unfold-
ing of the supernatural life, which issues from the
ministration of the Spirit of God.

We see too how all may serve the Kingdom of
God. By inward fidelity of our whole mind and will
to the Faith, the Order, the Authority of the Church :
by a loyal and devoted fidelity to the See of Peter

260 STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

and to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Fidelity to the
Holy See has upheld Ireland unto this day. Fidelity
to the Holy See would have saved Constantinople
from the yoke of the infidel : it would have preserved
England from the worldly pride which goes before
a fall.

And with this fidelity let us join the power of a
living example. Our will is not what we say or do,
so much as what we are. Men read not our words,
but us. We must be conformed to the will of the
Spirit, whose ministers and members we are. And
the consciousness of a Divine message and of a Divine
mission will be our strength. The least may share in
this work of God, for it is of His power, not of us.
And happy they who can bear witness for the Spirit
of Truth. Happy, who can sum up all their life in
one act or one sacrifice of all things, in testimony to
the Truth and Authority of Jesus. No matter how
feeble we are in ourselves: since far mightier for
God, and for His will, is the least within the kingdom
of Truth, than the greatest who are without.

VII.

OCCISI ET CORONATI.

PEEACHED AT THE SOLEMN MASS OF REQUIEM, FOR THOSE

WHO FELL IN BATTLE FOR THE LIBERTIES OF THE

CHURCH, AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ITS HEAD.

1860.

OCCISI ET COEONATI.

" You shall be hated by all nations for My Name's sake." —
St. Matt., xxiv, 9.

IT would have been more fitting that the task of
speaking to you to-day, had fallen to a Prince of the
Church, than to one of the least of its servants. Where-
fore, to supply in some degree his absence, I have it
in command to read to you the words of the Cardinal
Archbishop of Westminster, in a letter addressed to
me. " Tell them that in heart and spirit I am at St.
Patrick's, sharing the indignation of all good Catholics
at the base treachery to which the Holy Father has
been subjected by his own children, those whom God
appointed to be the nursing fathers of His Church ;
sharing also the sympathy of his faithful children in
his broken-hearted sorrow, and in the general admi-
ration of all of the gallant and noble devotedness of
his faithful troops."

We are met, indeed, for a great solemnity. In the
sight of the Church all her dead are dear and holy.
She alone, who possesses jurisdiction over the living,
follows her dead with love and prayer when they pass

264 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

beyond her pastoral sway. And they who die in
battle are especially dear in her sight; for a just war
is sacred, and they who are slain in it fall nobly.
And she commends them to God in the solemn re-
quiem of the Holy Sacrifice. But seldom were dead
more dear to her than these, both for their own sakes,
and for the cause in which they fell. St. Cyprian,
speaking of those who were slain for the faith, but out
of the unity of the Church, says : " Occisi sunt sed non
coronati" (They were slain, but not crowned) ; for it is
the cause that makes the martyr. And there is in the
cause for which these died a sacredness which lifts
them above the multitude of the common dead.

But before I pursue this thought, forgive me, if I
claim too much for myself in saying that to me the
commemoration of to-day appeals with a special feel-
ing. It is but three short months ago that I saw them,
day by day, in the streets and churches of Rome.
There were faithful hearts of every nation gathering
round the Holy Father to give their lives for his sake.
There were Austrians, full of their inflexible endu-
rance ; the chivalrous French ; the faithful and fiery
Bretons ; the devoted Belgians ; the heroic, tender-
hearted, and fearless Irish. We saw them familiarly.
They bore upon them the tokens of a stern manhood
with a childlike generosity, the bearing of Christian

OCCISI ET CORONATI,

265

soldiers, and the joyous docility of sons. They had
come from many lands, and their tongues and their
speech were many ; but they were one brotherhood
and one family, in one Church, and under one Com-
mon Father, at whose will they came. They were
wont to come to us, the Priests and Students of the
English and Irish Colleges, with all the confidence
and openness of brothers. As we passed along the
streets, either by the aspect of our countenances, or by
the accents of our speech, they would recognize us,
and join themselves to us. The Irish nation has one
special mark of Catholic charity. It is a people that
loves its Priests. I know nothing more humbling
than the confiding and generous love with which an
Irishman meets a Priest, above all in distant lands ;
and I never saw this beautiful grace of charity more
conspicuous than when they as strangers in a foreign
country, on their great and heroic errand, came to us
and claimed our care. And I shall never forget the
day when, on the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul,
these true and heroic sons and soldiers of Jesus Christ
were gathered in the great Basilica of St. Peter around
the Sovereign Pontiff, for whom they were so soon to
die. A nobler band of chivalrous and fearless men
never met around so great a cause. Who knows how
many of those very men who knelt that day before the

266 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

Confession of St. Peter may be among the nameless
dead whose Christian fidelity and fiery valour we to-
day commemorate. Forgive me these words, which I
could hardly restrain, and let us turn to the cause for
which they fell, and measure, if we may, the dignity
it bestows upon them. They died, then, for a cause
which has enrolled an army of martyrs in the calen-
dar of the Church — that is, for the Temporal Power of
the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It was this that crowned
our glorious St. Thomas with the aureola of a martyr.
His last words were, as theirs, " Pro Ecclesia Dei." It
was for the sovereignty of the Church, for the temporal
prerogatives, which from the supreme Pontiff flow
throughout the whole circuit of the Catholic unity.
It was for the same authority that these, too, gave their
lives. A common cause should win a common crown.
It would ill befit on such a day as this to weary you
with many words, or with a lengthened argument
which must fall cold upon the ear. It is enough to
affirm in such a time and place that theTemporal Power
of the Supreme Pontiff is an ordinance of God. Though
some hundreds of years passed by before the Vicar of
Christ was clothed with his Royalties, yet the germ of
his temporal prerogatives was inherent in the spiritual
supremacy from the beginning. When the Church
had knit together all nations by the Faith and Baptism

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 267

of Jesus Christ, all national distinctions were taken up
and suspended in a higher unity ; and the Head and
Father of the Church became the Creator of a new
civil order. The old civilization had been swept away,
and a new civilization, consecrated by faith, arose upon
its ruins. Such is modern Europe, of which the tem-
poral power of the Holy See was the germ and sus-
taining principle. And so Christendom came to its
maturity, and for a thousand years held together in the
unity of faith the nations of the world. But this period
of Christian civilization is passing fast away. For the
last three hundred years this work of construction has
been gradually dissolving. The so-called Reformation
set in motion the selfish principle of nationality, which,
in religion, is Schism, and in politics has become the
principle of revolution. Saxony first, and then Eng-
land, withdrew from the family of Catholic nations.

Later the same movement entered into France, and
now is threatening Italy.

The anti-Catholic nations have drawn together in
conspiracy against the Holy See. In 1848 Rome was
full of strangers from every part who disturbed its
civil peace. The Roman State was overrun by them.
Rome itself was held by their armed bands. They
were for a while driven out and kept at bay. But their
hour is come again. An army of every nation, in

268 OCCISI ET CORONATI,

which the turbulent of every land are collected under
a leader who has lived by his sword, threatens the
southern frontier. The army of a once Catholic power,
without the formalities of war, and in violation of the
sacred law of nations, has overrun the Pontifical State,
even to within sight of Rome. Rome is beleaguered ;
its territory trodden down by foreigners and strangers.
What then more just, more reasonable, more Christian,
than that the Holy See should be defended by the
Faithful of all nations even as it was assailed ? It is a
Catholic cause in which every member of the Church
most intimately shares. The Church of all nations has
a right to the chivalry of all nations. Upon the patri-
mony of St. Peter no Catholic can be a foreigner. He
is on the soil of the Common Father of the Faithful ;
and in defending it he defends more than his own
native country. In vindication of this great Catholic
principle, the Holy Father called on all his sons to
come to his aid. In defence of this sacred obligation
of all the faithful, one of the greatest soldiers of France
placed himself at the Holy Father's feet. He did not
fear to expose the laurel he had won in his country's
service to the doubtful chances and slender arms of
the Roman army. With a chivalry which inscribes
his name in the roll of the great warriors of the Ca-
tholic world, Lamoriciere undertook what seemed to be

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 269

a forlorn hope. He who had taught the soldiers of
France that it takes eight days to form a Zouave, the
flower of the Imperial legions, in three months out of
the scanty material in his hands formed an army whose
deeds of valour will be remembered when many of the
exploits of which we vaunt will be forgotten. I hardly
know in the records of warfare a more daring and
noble stand than the defence of Spoleto, where for
twelve hours a handful of 600 withstood a whole army
of some 14,000 men. In the morning of the combat
they heard Mass and received the Holy Communion ;
and then for twelve long hours held out, slaying or
wounding a number about equal to their whole array.
Twice they refused to surrender, saying that they held
Spoleto for God and for the Pope ; and it was only
when the authority of the Holy Father, by his dele-
gate, commanded them to cease from battle, that they
consented to lay down their arms. Like to this also
was the combat along the heights of Castel Fidardo
sustained through a whole long day by some 7,000
men against an enemy threefold in number, and when
reduced to a handful, their great leader at the head
of the few who remained cut their way through the
opposing masses of the enemy, and threw himself into
his last stronghold. And then in Ancona, pressed by
land and sea, he held out until every gun was silenced

270 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

in his defences, and he was compelled by the dictates
of humanity to cease from a hopeless conflict. I do
not know whether in the history of war there can be
nobler deeds wrought under greater disadvantages
and in the front of such overwhelming numbers.

And yet this is the man whom the nameless calum-
niators of this country deride as a man of blood,
issuing one day murderous edicts, and the next sur-
rendering without a blow. It is not his ancient com-
panions in arms who thus revile him, for they know
too well the chivalry and clemency of his heart, nor
even his antagonists, for they know his prowess, but
writers who strike in disguise, and refuse to hear the
truth or to see facts when put in all evidence before
them. But the judgment of the valour of those holy
dead whose blood is still warm on the hills of Perugia,
the citadel of Spoleto, and the ramparts of Ancona,
will be with the brave and generous of all nations,
and they will not wrong them in the sentence.

They died also in the defence of the person of the
Vicar of Christ. The attack upon his possessions and
upon his freedom is but aprelude to the dangers, which
as in 1848, may again surround his person. They who
saw, as I did, the events of 1848-9, will know by
what perils even the life of the Sovereign Pontiff was
surrounded. The streets of Rome were swept by a

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 27 1

multitude, who flocked from all parts of Italy, and were
driven by the Governments of Europe from their capi-
tals. Men of every nation, the turbulent and seditious
of all countries, were congregated there. They kept
the City of Rome in a perpetual fever of excitement
and terror. They assembled in the Corso with the
badges and demonstrations of the Italian Revolution.
They held their public meetings in the Coliseum,
where they were harangued by those whose names
have since become infamous by their apostacy. They
surrounded the Quirinal Palace, clamouring rudely for
the Holy Father to come forth upon the balcony, and
bestow upon them the Pontifical Benediction. They
shut up the Sovereign Pontiff in his palace, so that he
ceased to go forth from its gates. Turbulence and
license grew more and more, until the First Minister
of the Holy Father fell slain by assassins upon the
threshold of the Cancelleria ; and the Vicar of Christ
forsook the city stained by blood, which was sacred,
because it was that of his servant. This very day letters
from Rome tell us that men of unknown name are
seen congregating in the streets; and faces never
seen since 1848 are again appearing in the city ; that
the forerunners of the same disorders are abroad;
and on the frontiers north and south are the -same
men, with armed followers in force, who in 1848

272 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

held Rome by bloodshed against its lawful Sovereign.
It was against such perils as these that the noble
heroic dead, whom we commemorate, opposed them-
selves as a living barrier around the person of the
Vicar of Christ. For him, therefore, they were slain,
and their deaths are sacred for this motive of fidelity
and devotion to his sacred life.

There was also a further motive in this noble cause.
They died in defence of the Church of God. For the
Head and the Body are one; and the cause of one is
the cause of both. The prerogatives of the Head are
the endowments of the Body; they cannot be dimi-
nished withoutaviolation of the liberties of the Church
throughout the world. The Sovereignty of the Su-
preme Pontiff is the independence of the Universal
Church. His dependence would be our bondage to
the Civil Powers. As the Head suffers in vindication
of his twofold supremacy, and all the prerogatives in-
volved in it, he suffers for the Body ; and the unity,
liberty, and authority of the Body are assailed in his
person. They fell, then, in our behalf. The cause
was ours in which they died. They must be blind in-
deed who cannot see that what has begun in the Head
will soon spread to the whole body of the Church ; that
the assault upon the centre will soon extend itself to
every province of the Catholic unity ; that the tyranny

OCCISI ET CORONATI 2?3

of revolutions and despotism of civil power will soon
carry out in detail, in every place, the dominion they
are striving to establish on the will and the person of
the Holy Father. Against the life of the Church the
gates of hell cannot prevail ; but against its peace and
its liberty in every place, it is inevitable that the
principle of anti-Catholic and anti-Christian revolution,
which is ravaging the patrimony of St. Peter, must, if
successful there, prevail throughout the world. It is
the prelude of a new era of penal laws ; and therefore
for us and for our liberties they gave their lives.

Yet still once more ; they fell in a cause which
ought to be sacred even in the eyes of those who are
not of the Catholic Church. They were standing in
defence of the last and lingering remains of the Ca-
tholic society of Europe. There are in the world only
two societies — the natural and the supernatural. The
natural existed four thousand years before the super-
natural was founded. The civilization of Pagan Rome
was the society of nature, founded on the will and
power of man, without faith in God. The supernatural
is the Church Catholic and Roman, which came upon it,
and sanctified, sustained, remoulded, and consecrated
its life and structure. The Vicar of the Incarnate
Word, clothed in his twofold Sovereignty, spiritual
and temporal, was the creator of this new order of

18

OCCISI ET CORONATI.

European society. He is the symbol as well as the
fountain of the sacerdotal and royal power, and all the
nations united to him are constituted upon the super-
natural basis of the Incarnation, and derive their life
from Christianity. What, then, is the falling away of
nations from the obedience of the Holy See, but a fall
from the supernatural order, and a return to natural
society ? Nations which have not the Catholic unity
as their foundation rest upon the legislation of the mere
human will. Their laws are no longer the doctrines of
the Faith, nor the commandments of God, nor the pre-
cepts of the Church, nor the will of God Incarnate for
us; but the instincts of nature and the will of man.
The last witness of this Christian policy is the Sove-
reignty of the Vicar of Christ. He is the keystone of
the arch. If it be struck out, the whole fabric of the
Christian Society throughout the world must be
loosened to its base. I do not indeed affirm that the
Catholic Society of Europe may not be once more re-
vived ; that God may not have in store some great and
glorious future, after thewater-floods have passed away.
When St. Gregory the Great closed his eyes upon the
world, the very name of Christendom seemed dying
out. He wrote in his letters and his homilies as if the
end of all things were at hand. He told them that the
world was withering. The Saracens were in Asia and

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 275

along the African coast, the Goths in Spain, the Ger-
manic tribes in France ; the Lombards for five-and-
thirty years ravaged the heart of Italy ; all seemed to
be lost, and the fair structure of Christian faith and
peace to be effaced from the earth. So he died, and
went to his rest. But from that time the whole new
order of Christian Europe developed and organised
itself, and a fairer structure than he ever saw arose, and
its solidity and its symmetry are not wholly gone even
at this day. So it may be again. But the nineteenth
century is not like the sixth ; and the elements and
principles of reconstruction and renovation are now
feeble or extinct, where in his day they were active
and pregnant. The old order seems worn out and to
have run its course. The last lingering remains of
the Catholic Society of Europe is the twofold Sove-
reignty of Rome for which they died.

Such then are the motives and such the cause for
which they fell. And yet there is another reason why
the Church would give them an especial honour, and
why we feel a distinct duty and joy to celebrate their
sacred heroism. It is this : they died under the scorn
and slander of the world. If I could think that the
storm of reviling, which day by day has been blown
abroad throughout England by the nameless hands
which write in the dark, were a true utterance of the

276 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

sense and mind of the English people, I should be
ashamed of my country. But I do not believe it. I
believe the English people to be both just and gene-
rous; that it loves truth, and hates falsehood, even when
in contest with an adversary. I believe, too, that the
people of England are, in great measure, innocent of
the sin of the Protestant Reformation, the head and
source of all the miserable traditions of hate and ani-
mosity with which we are afflicted. The Reformation
in England was the will of a tyrannous and profligate
King, of a dominant oligarchy, and of a terrible des-
potism,which martyred the Priests of the Church upon
the scaffold, or exiled them from their flocks, and
forced a false religion upon an unwilling people by the
cruel ties of persecution, and the permanent severities of
penal laws. Between the spirit of hate and perversity
which issues from the press day by day, and the mind
of the people of England, I believe there is a vast in-
terval. I am persuaded that the English people have
no sympathy with thosewho, in articles without a name,
have branded these heroic men with the titles of bravos
and cut-throats, ruffians, hirelings, and cowards. It
would seem as if, to incur the contempt of such writers,
it were enough to be a Catholic and an Irishman. If
this were the heart and voice of the English people, I
say I should be ashamed of my country. And ashamed

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 277

I am of those among my countrymen and country-
women, though educated and refined — of public men
and high-born ladies, whose names are to be read in
newspaper-lists of sympathisers with a warfare of injus-
tice and wrong, in violation of the whole law of nations
and the sacred principles of Christian society. Such
names are soiled by contact with a cause which, as I
know by letters direct from the spot, is filling the
cities of Italy with obscenity and blasphemy.

It is because they are so reviled, that we rejoice to
give them this public honour to-day. They have died
amid the execration of the world. So died the martyrs,
and so clamoured the world, " Christianos ad leones !"
to the Flavian amphitheatre, and tens of thousands of
the great Imperial race, the lordly Patrician, and the
luxurious Roman lady, gazed with excitement on the
work of blood as the scorned and hated Christian was
torn by the beasts of the desert. And so, too, died One
greater than the martyrs, at whom the Pharisees re-
viled and the people wagged their heads. And so it is
glorious and good to die for a cause the world will not
and cannot understand. If it were to defend a trading
factory against the native races of the soil, or to hedge
in a powerful neighbour, or to execute a jealous policy
by sustaining the integrity of the Turkish empire, the
world could understand and would glorify its heroes as

278 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

at Alma and at Inkermann ; but to be slain for the
temporal sovereignty of the Vicar of the Son of God,
for his sacred person, or for the Church of God, or even
for the Christian Society to which they claim to be-
long, is incomprehensible and contemptible in their
eyes. "If you were of this world, the world would
love its own; but because you are not of the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the
world hateth you."* So it ever was, and so it must be ;
the scorner may scorn, as Semei cursed the King of
Israel, and we can but say, as he said, " Dimittite eum
ut maledicat juxta prseceptum Domini."t Let him
alone, let him curse ; for so is the bidding of the Lord.
Such, then, was the cause for which they gave them-
selves. Maylnot, then, say, "Occisietcoronati?" For
now shall they not be numbered among the martyrs
of the Church who died for its sovereignty and for its
Supreme Pastor upon earth ? It is not for us to canon-
ize them, or to inscribe them in the calendar of the
Church ; but among those who are venerated upon its
altars are many who were crowned as martyrs, because
they laid down their lives in vindication of the same
sacred rights and the same Divine prerogatives.

How, then, shall I say, pray for them ? Do they
need, as others, the suffrage of our prayers ? Must we

* St. John, xv, 19. t II Kings, xvi, 10.

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 279

not believe that when in the last ebbing moments of
life their warm blood flowed upon the earth, there was
another Life-blood mingled with theirs, which cleansed
all their stain? May we not believe that the heroic
generosity of their last days, and the acts of devotion
and reparation of those last hours, made full expiation
for the pain due to the sins of their youth ? It is hardly,
then, for them we pray ; but for their orphans and their
widows, for their fathers and mothers, and brothers
and sisters, who in their far homes in Ireland are
weeping over their brave who shall return no more.
If ever the heart of Ireland was full of loving sorrow
— and what people more loving or more full of sorrow
for its dead? — then surely, at this moment there is a
mourning among the wives and mothers of Ireland
for as noble and sacred a bereavement as was ever
mourned even in the land of sorrows.

But if we do not pray for them, we have need to
pray for ourselves, that we may be as fearless, as
faithful, and as generous as they; that we may not
count even our life dear when the rights and liberties
of the Church are at stake.

And be not afraid, brethren, for the Holy See.
What has befallen it is only its common fare these
eighteen hundred years. It has lived in conflict : again
and again from age to age it has been beset and over-

280 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

whelmed. The Patrimony of St. Peter has been
trampled down, and held for generations by despots
and usurpers ; and Rome itself has been sieged and
sacked, sacked and sieged again. The Vicar of Jesus
Christ has gone forth again and again from his seat of
power to await the subsiding of the waters ; and when
the flood was overpassed all things were found as in
the beginning. So it ever has been ; so it ever shall be ;
for the life of the Church is undying because Divine.
The Roman Empire could not quench it ; the nations
of the North could not put it out. The Lombards
ravaged its inheritance, and were destroyed ; the Counts
of the Marches and of Tusculum held it by violence,
and are passed away ; they leagued with the Saracens
against it, and the Saracens are no more ; the Normans
of the South came up against it, and are not ; Henry
of Germany strove with St. Gregory VII. He was
excommunicated, and fell. Frederick Barbarossa laid
siege to Rome. Alexander III smote him with inter-
dict, and he never prospered more. An Emperor of
France annexed Rome to his dominions, and laid hands
on the Vicar of Christ, and his downfall is a byeword
in the history of this century. It is a dangerous thing
to measure strength with the Church of God. But it
is not France that is contending with the Vicar of
Christ. The people of France are a noble, generous,

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 28 1

chivalrous, and Catholic people. It was the people of
France that, in 1848, with hands yet wounded and
bleeding from its terrible domestic combats, put forth
its might and wrested this City of Rome from the
hordes who threaten it again, and restoring it to the
Sovereign Pontiff, replaced the Vicar of Christ upon
his lawful throne. France is not to be confounded
with its transient political atmosphere, or with the
momentary form of its government, or the passing as-
cendency of an individual. The strong man, blind in
his strength, who laid his hands upon the pillars of the
house, shook them only to bury himself in the ruins.
So neither is the Catholic and devout people of Pied-
mont to be confounded with the government and
dynasty of Sardinia, on which, for its sainted ancestry,
a blessing has till now traditionally rested. It was
the House of Savoy that called down the benediction
of Heaven ; but Sardinia has sold its birthright and
its blessing together ; for Savoy is no longer in its in-
heritance. The end, though it be slow to come, is sure.
Sardinia has violated the law of nations and the sacred
precincts of the Church of God. It has thrown down
the challenge, and the gage of battle has been taken
up, not by this little band, who have fallen with the
heroism of Christian martyrs before the multitudes of
its armed men, but by the Son of God, whose Person is

232 OCCISI ET CORONATI.

smitten and outraged in the person of His Vicar. The
wager of battle is accepted ; and sooner or later, the end
is sure. u Some men's sins are manifest, going before
to judgment" with the speed and notoriety of a public
array and of a summary infliction ; u and some men
they follow after,"* with a silent, watchful, long-suf-
fering foot, but with a terrible and Divine indignation.
But what shall I say of England — or rather of those
who misrepresent the English people to the world — of
the selfish, tortuous, tricky diplomacy, whose only per-
ceptible idea is a hatred of Catholic nations, and whose
highest excitement is for the manoeuvres of petty per-
sonal rivalries or for a change in a tariff and a tax
on paper ? A hundred years ago a King of France
sowed sedition in an English colony, and in thirty
years France was drowned in its own blood, and
the fair structure of its social life was crushed for
a generation of man. They that sow revolutions
shall reap them; and they that foment rebellion
in their neighbours' borders shall be chastised by
rebellion in their own. The complicity of English-
men in the piracies and international crimes of the
Italian invasion, by money, by ostentatious sympathy,
and by personal service, will bring its just recoil.
What has been shall be again ; and in that day it
* 1 Tim., v, 24.

OCCISI ET CORONATI. 283

shall be known against whom they have conspired —
against the Vicar of Jesus Christ— a man meek above
all men upon earth, who came among his people as an
Angel of Peace, whose first act was amnesty to the
men who afterwards betrayed and made war against
him. His whole pontificate has been one of clemency
and of suffering, dignified with inexhaustible patience
and with the firmness of a supernatural calm. Of all
the glorious Pontiffs who illuminate the succession of
the Apostles, not one has ever been more devotedly
or justly loved than he against whom the nations are
conspiring. He is the aim of the false tongue and
the foul blows of a dishonourable warfare. But in
this he is fulfilling his mission. For the Vicar of
Christ is set to prove and to condemn, to try and to
save ; as the witness of the grace of life, the guardian
of the sovereignty, infallibility, and Divine preroga-
tives of the Church of the living God.

VII.
UNITY IN DIVERSITY

THE

PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH.

PREACHED AT THE CONSECRATION OF THE PRIORY AND
PRO-CATHEDRAL OF ST. MICHAEL'S, HEREFORD.

TO

THE VERY REVEREND NORBERT SWEENY, O.S.B.

DEAR FATHER PRIOR,

When you desired me to take a part in your great
Festival, I answered that I would with much willingness do your
bidding, as a token of my love and veneration for the Religious
Orders of the Church, and especially in England ; and in printing
this Sermon at your request, I do so as offering to you and to
them, a tessera charitatis, and that we may obtain in return a share
in your charity and your prayers.

Believe me always
Your affectionate servant in Jesus Christ,

HENRY EDWARD MANNING.

ST. MARY OF THE ANGELS, BAYSWATER,
Feast of the Guardian Angels, 1860.

UNITY IN DIVEESITY

THE

PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH.

" We being many, are oue body in Christ." — Rom., xii, 5.

ON such a day as this, it is easier to find many topics
on which to speak, than to choose one alone on which
to dwell. The consecration of this stately and beautiful
church, raised by the munificence of one person, with
the august Catholic rites, would alone be enough to
make a festival ; but it is more than this. The Catholic
Church in England adds this day one more to the
rising order of its cathedral churches, and restores
another of its centres of unity and authority; renew-
ing its ancient loss, as nature, with its ever fresh and
reproductive life, heals its wounds and reclothes its
wastes. This beautiful church is henceforth to be
numbered witli the cathedrals of Salford and South-
wark, Nottingham and Plymouth. In this, again,
we might find an adequate subject for to-day.

But other thoughts still arise upon our solemnity.
To-day, St. Benedict receives the restitution of a por-

288 UNITY IN DIVERSITY

tion of his ancient glory in England. Once more he
is found, as of old, amid the woodlands and the rivers,
and the waving harvests, and the fruits of the earth.
Once more in the solitudes of our land he comes, with
the staff of discipline and the finger on his lips, to take
possession of his home. Once more, after three hun-
dred years, he goes forth with the Patriarch " into the
fields to meditate" at eventide. Here he has reared his
walls, and here he has renewed somewhat of his old
majesty and splendour. And to-day we have heard
the same sweet solemn chants, the same antiphons and
responsories, which sounded through the roofs of
Westminster and Grlastonbury, of St. Alban's, Bar-
deney, and Croyland. They are sung, too, by the
sons and lineal descendants of the same men of old,
who are now before the Throne, in token of the un-
dying vitality of the Church of St. Benedict.

This, too, would give us a worthy topic for our
festival.

But I seem to see in it something still more singular
and proper to this day's solemnity. We are met for
the consecration of a Monastic Cathedral. He who
rules in this see, with the unction of the Episcopate, is
a son of St. Benedict. The canons of his chapter are
monks ; the seminary attached to the Cathedral Church
is also the noviciate of a religious order. To-day is the

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 289

first and singular example, after three hundred years of
this union of the Hierarchy in all its manifestations with
the life of religion, so glorious in the Catholic history
of England. In the celebration of to-day, then, I seem
to see a betrothal of the two great ministries of the
Church — the Secular and the Religious. It is the
festival of their espousals ; and the invitation which has
brought together the Hierarchy and the Secular priest-
hood with our brethren of the Religious Orders is a
bidding to union and to mutual joy. This morning,
the right reverend Prelate who spoke to us of the glories
of St. Benedict, and of the interior life of God in the
soul of which he was the patriarch, told us that he
spoke as a Benedictine ; and though I have received
no delegation, and am not worthy of the charge,
nevertheless I trust that the secular Hierarchy and
priesthood gathered here will not disclaim what I say,
when, as a secular priest, I accept this invitation in tes-
timony of the love and veneration which we all bear to
the great Saints of God the founders of the religious
life, and to their families the Religious Orders of the
Church, and especially in England. We and they are
united by every bond of charity, by the ties of brother-
hood, by the union of our forefathers in faith and
patience, by the glory of their memories, and by the

fellowship of their martyrdom. When the storm swept

19

2QO UNITY IN DIVERSITY

over the Church, three hundred years ago, Seculars
and Religious witnessed and suffered side by side.
They stood in one array, and mingled their blood on
the same scaffolds. We may take up for them with
an emphatic truth the Responsory which the Church
puts into the mouth of her priests on the Feast of
Many Martyrs : u Hsec est vera fraternitas, quse nun-
quam potuit violari certamine : qui eff uso sanguine se-
cuti sunt Dominum;" and renewing the Confession
which the Saints of old bore in the basilicas and
palaces of Imperial Rome: " Contemnentes aulam re-
giam, pervenerunt ad regna coelestia. Ecce quam
bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum."
This subject, then, seems to be especially seasonable
to-day, when we celebrate the union of these two great
orders of the Church in the person, as it were, of St.
Benedict and of his sons ; for the large, loving, and
benign spirit of the great patriarch of the religious life
has always been especially dear to the Priesthood of
the Church in all lands, and above all in our own. I
know no passage in ecclesiastical history more touch-
ing than the long confessorship and the closing act of
F. Buckly, the last whom the tempest of the Reforma-
tion left to St. Benedict. When exile and martyrdom
had swept off his fathers and brethren, he was left
alone, the only lingering witness of the family and the

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 29 1

apostolate of St. Benedict in England. After forty
years of imprisonment, when he was ninety years of
age, and the hour of death drew nigh, and all hope
of a lineage in England seemed to be cut off, two
secular priests came to him to ask for the habit of the
Order. After due trial he clothed them ; and on the
day when he had transmitted the spirit of St. Bene-
dict to his sons, he became blind. He had seen his
heart's desire upon earth, and his eyes longed only
to see the King in His beauty, on whose glory they
soon were opened.

We claim, therefore, a peculiar tie of spiritual con-
sanguinity with the Father and Brethren of this mon-
astery, and on this subject I would ask to dwell for a
while to-day. My object will be to speak of a theme
trite in itself, and yet ever new in its application —
the intimate and indivisible unity of the Secular and
the Religious in the Church of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle, then, in the Epistle to the Romans,
tells us that the Church or mystical Body of Christ, is
so fashioned and organised, that, though manifold in
its members, it is absolutely one. He goes on to say :
u And having different gifts, according to the grace
given to us, whether prophecy, to be used according
to the proportion of faith ; or ministry, in minister-
ing ; or he that teacheth, in doctrine ; he that ex-

292 UNITY IN DIVERSITY

horteth, in exhorting; he that giveth, with simplicity ;
he that ruleth, with carefulness; he that showeth
mercy, with cheerfulness."

As in the living body are many members, offices,
and perfections, and all designed and wrought by the
Divine wisdom and power, so also in the Church. All
the integral members of the Church are ordained of
God, and all its manifold activity, its harmonious unity
of life, is directly created and ordered by Himself.

He chose out and united the twelve into one body,
and bestowed upon them the presence and inhabitation
of the Holy Ghost, whereby the Church received
its Divine gift of twofold infallibility — the passive,
whereby the whole body was pervaded by aluminous
consciousness of the Revelation of God, as the light of
the sun diffuses itself throughout the waters of the
great deep: the active, whereby the Church, with
unfaltering voice and the precision of a supernatural
intelligence, propounds the dogma of faith and the
law of morals in every land and in every age. The
whole mystical body received the effusion of this
flood of light, and with it the exuberant communica-
tion of all the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost,
not in its intelligence alone, but also in its moral
powers. The charity of God was poured out into its
heart by the Holy Ghost, who was given to it. An

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 293

interior fountain of charity was opened in the mysti-
cal Body ; the two precepts of love were fulfilled in
it ; and by the presence of the Sanctifier and the
inheritance of His created graces, the soul of the
mystical Body was constituted, adorned, and assimi-
lated to the image of God. The likeness of the Divine
perfections — of the unity, sanctity, and beauty of God
— was seen in reflection ; and the image of the Word
incarnate, its Divine Head, in the perfection of our
humanity, was shadowed forth in its life on earth. It
was for this the Apostle prayed when he asked for the
Ephesians, u that He may grant you, according to the
riches of His glory, to be strengthened by His Spirit
with might unto the inward man. That Christ may
dwell by faith in your hearts: that, being rooted and
grounded in charity, you may be able to comprehend,
with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length,
and height, and depth: to know also the charity of
Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may
be filled unto all the fulness of God."*

It was this that the Apostle described, when he
said : " We all, beholding the glory of the Lord with
open face, are transformed into the same image from
glory to glory, as by the spirit of the Lord."f

And in this complex perfection and manifold fulness
* Ephes., iii, 16-19. f II Cor., iii, 18.

294 UNITY IN DIVERSITY

of the mystical Body there are various and almost in-
exhaustible powers and perfections of light and love,
of order and activity, vitally necessary to each other
and to the whole Church. As in the individual soul
there are its three natural powers, and its three super-
natural graces, and the seven gifts and the twelve
fruits, and the manifold endowments of the Holy Ghost,
intimately combined with and vitally necessary to the
body, which again bestows upon the soul its instru-
ment of power and motion and action and perfection—
so with the Church. Its unity, solidity, visibility, ex-
pansion, coherence, and universal action depend upon
the organisation and perpetuity of its Hierarchy.
The college of the Apostles was the condition of the
diffusion of light and charity through the world, as its
succession and continuity is of its preservation. The
world was filled with its operations, and by it the pre-
sence of the invisible God is manifested. For eighteen
hundred years, in all lands, the visible Church has
witnessed for the invisible kingdom of God; ever
renewing its organisation, and extending itself into
new regions of the world. As it has receded in the
East, it has reproduced itself in the West ; as the North
has withered, it has put forthitslife under the Southern
sun. And in the continuous evolving of its successions,
from age to age, the end and functions of the Hier-

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 2Q5

archy are manifest. The college of the Apostles is,
as it were, the point of rest and firmness, from which
the vast activity of its visible structure and jurisdic-
tion takes its spring.

So also from the earliest consciousness of the mysti-
cal Body the science of Theology began to arise. The
intellectual conception and expression of the great
dogma of the faith, full-orbed and perfect from the
beginning in the mind of the Church, assumed per-
petually a more definite and explicit form. The light
which, from the day of Pentecost, dwelt in fulness
in the intelligence of the Church, exhibited more and
more its exquisite precision and distinctness. The
Creed of the Apostles, expounded by the definitions
of the first four great Councils, became a foundation
and a structure of Theology, which has been ever
rising to its perfection. It was first committed to the
Saints of the East to order and elucidate the science
of the Church. The line of St. Athanasius and St.
Basil and the two Gregories ends in St. John of
Damascus, the forerunner, as he may be called, of
the Scholastic method. Next it passed to the doctors
of the West, — to your own St. Anselm, to St.
Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and to the constellations
of illuminated intelligences which shine in succession
through the families of St. Benedict, St. Dominic,

296

UNITY IN DIVERSITY

and St. Francis. By them the interior gifts of light
were elaborated into the luminous science of God,
which rules, as Queen in the Hierarchy of sciences,
over the intellect of the world.

And in this world of interior light, there is still an
inmost region into which only the most illuminated
can enter: the centre in which God dwells with
special intimacy, and manifests Himself by His
operations in the soul. The science of dogma is the
avenue to the science of the Saints, to the theology
of the mystical life and its perfection. It is here the
chosen ministers of the Spirit have their field of toil.
They watch and record the interior experience of
the life of God in the mystical Body, and describe
the ways of God, the transient motions of His feet
upon the waters as with the pencils of the solar light.

What, then, are these three powers and operations
of the Church but those of which the Apostle speaks
when he says that the external Hierarchy of Apostles
and Doctors was instituted for " the work of the
ministry, for the perfecting of the Saints," and by
reaction of their vital influence, for " the edifying
of the Body of Christ ?" And these three operations
have been ever working, never stayed or hindered,
but always accomplishing their own laws, and attain-
ing always to their own end, namely, the perfection
of the whole Body of the Church.

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 297

It is God Himself, then, who so ordained the essence
of His Church, and implanted in it these vital and
necessary faculties and powers, that has distinguished
them within themselves, and in their elaboration and
exercise, so that they can never be confused.

The Apostle says: " There are diversities of graces,
but the same Spirit ; and there are diversities of minis-
tries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of
operations, but the same God who worketh all in all.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every
man unto profit. To one, indeed, by the Spirit, is
given the word of wisdom : and to another, the word
of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: to
another, faith in the same Spirit: to another, the
grace of healing in one Spirit ; to another, the working
of miracles : to another, prophecy : to another, the
discerning of spirits: to another, divers kinds of
tongues : to another, interpretation of speeches. But
all these things one and the same Spirit worketh,
dividing to every one according as He will." "And
God hath set some in the Church, first Apostles,
secondly Prophets, thirdly Doctors, after that miracles,
then the grace of healings, helps, governments, kinds
of tongues, interpretations of speeches."*

According to the same law, by which He committed

* I Cor., xii, 4-11,28.

298 UNITY IN DIVERSITY

the pastoral commission and the twofold jurisdiction
over His natural and mystical Body, together with the
custody of the Seven Sacraments, to an order specially
chosen out and anointed by Himself, so He has singled
out and distributed to individuals among His servants
the special custody, exercise, and elaboration of the
several gifts of His Spirit. As the Hierarchy, by its
world-wide and continuous action, in its tribunals and
councils, and its supreme Legislator and Sovereign,
has built up the structure of the Pontifical law, by
which the wills of nations and peoples are harmonised
and combined in the obedience and unity of the
Church; so He has committed to His servants,
specially chosen and called, the trust and development
of particular gifts. Every several perfection of the
mystical Body has been, as it were, incorporated : the
interior life in St. Benedict, the power of preaching
in St. Dominic, poverty in St. Francis, spiritual
asceticism in St. Ignatius, love of the sick in St»
Camillus, of the Sacrament of Penance in St.
Alphonsus, the Passion of Jesus in Blessed Paul of
the Cross, and a thousand more besides.

The Blessed Sacrament alone has I know not how
many guardians and special witnesses; the Sacred
Heart, the five Sacred Wounds, the Precious Blood,
each has its Saint and its special manifestation.

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 299

What is this but the same great law of diversity in
unity and harmony in multitude ; every several gift,
distinct from any other, and intrusted each one to th£
special care of its own Saints and children ? And all
that the Spirit of God has wrought in and through
these chosen Saints, He has perpetuated in the
families of their lineage. In order to give intensity
and perpetuity to their work on earth, He has created
round them those who, being penetrated by the same
Spirit, and conformed to the same work of grace,
sustain, and even unfold to greater breadth of mani-
festation and application, the special work of their
lives. What are these but the great orders of the
Church, which in leisure and retirement and mutual
help and continual accumulation, fill up the work of
their founders, and perpetuate it from age to age ?

And God has so knit them together in the unity of
the same Body, that, though they be distinct, they are
indivisible. They are united together by inhering in
the same essence of the Church ; they are interwoven
by the mutual influence of their operations ; they are
inseparably combined by their action and reaction,
which, as it operates, "perfects the Saints and edifies
the Body of Christ." " For the Body is not one
member, but many. If the foot should say, Because
I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it there-

300 UNITY IN DIVERSITY

fore not of the body? And if the ear should say,
because I am not the eye, I am not of the body ; is
it there fore not of the body ? If the whole body were
the eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole
were hearing, where would be the smelling? But
now God hath set the members every one of them
in the body, as it hath pleased Him. And if they
were all one member, where would be the body ? But
now there are many members indeed, yet one body.
And the eye cannot say to the hand, I need not thy
help: nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need
of you. And if one member suffer any thing, all the
members suffer with it ; or if one member glory, all
the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body
of Christ, and members of member."*

And our Divine Lord, in committing to Peter, His
Vicar upon earth, the two keys of jurisdiction and of
knowledge, made him the supreme head and uniting
bond of all these interior ministries of His Church. To
St. Peter was said, "All power is given to me in Heaven
and on Earth. Going, therefore, teach all nations,
baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I have commanded you : and be-
hold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation
* I Cor., xii, 15-27.

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 301

of the world ;"* and again : " Feed my sheep."f To
him was committed the toil and the burden of an apos-
tolic life ; and to all his successors, and to the Secular
Hierarchy united with them is appointed the outer
life of warfare and government, of jurisdiction and of
judgment. But I may say that the key of knowledge
has been entrusted by St. Peter himself to the Orders
of Religion ; to those who, withdrawing from the dust
and the glare of the outward toils of the Church,
mature in secret the interior life, the spirit of counsels,
the science of God and of His Saints. As in the old
law there were in the Temple many courses of ministers,
some to beat out the oil, and others to trim the lamps
in the house of the Lord, so now it is to the Orders of
Religion that we come for the toils and fruits of
theology matured in rest and silence. It is from them
we draw the secrets of the interior life, and the spirit
which must sustain and sanctify us in the overtoil of
our daily labours. And yet God has so tempered all
things together in His Church, that to the apostolic
authority, to the episcopate sitting in its consistories
and its councils, all, even the doctors and teachers of
the religious life, must come, as to the fountain of
jurisdiction and of light, of discernment and of judg-
ment. On the heads of the Apostles and their suc-

* St. Matt., xxviii, 18-20. f St. John, xxi, 17.

302 UNITY IN DIVERSITY

cessors rests the gratia veritatis, the special gift and
unction of the Faith. And they sit as judges on the
illuminated labours of all; for they rule the Church,
and are the guardians of the Faith, and with them in
its fulness is the grace of Pentecost, as St. Irenaeus
writes : " God has poured out His Spirit into the
Church as into a pure vessel. Where the Spirit is,
there is the Church, and where the Church is, there is
the Spirit and all grace." All the theology of the
Church, dogmatic and mystical, passes at last under
the judgment of the Church in its Hierarchy, and of
its Supreme Pontiffs, and is corrected by its discern-
ment, and stamped with its authority. Now in this
the whole body is bound together by the bonds of
universal communication of its lights and gifts, and
by the reciprocation of its distinct and various opera-
tions. Though the members be many, yet they are,
in their vital action, one living whole.

But this beautiful harmony and unity of the body,
in St. Benedict is carried even to an identification
of orders and operations, otherwise distinct. As an
exuberant vine, with its running branches and broad
leaves, overspreads the massive structure of a wall, and
hides all beneath with the richness of its foliage and
the multitude of its clustering fruits, so was the family
of St. Benedict. It seemed at one time to take pos-

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 303

session of the Visible Church. Its interior spirit
entered into the line of Pontiffs. The twelve degrees
of humility ascended the Holy See, and sat upon the
Apostolic throne. Fifty Pontiffs of the family of St.
Benedict have reigned over the Church of God. St.
Gregory the Great, and St. Gregory VII, no less great
than he, and four successors, who lifted the Pontificate
to its highest glory, were all sons of St. Benedict.
A writer some four centuries ago told us that the
Order numbers up more than twenty thousand Arch-
bishops and Bishops. It was a Benedictine Pope who
sent St. Augustine, a Benedictine monk, to England.
For six hundred years every Archbishop of Canter-
bury, with one exception, wore the monastic habit.
The English Hierarchy was chiefly Benedictine. The
English cathedrals were half, at least, Benedictine.
The schools and universities of England were founded
by Benedictines. Catholic England was so predomi-
nantly Benedictine that it has been called the Apos-
tolate of St. Benedict ; and from England, again, he
sent forth his sons into France and Germany, and the
countries of the North and of the Alps. Never in the
history of any Order, or of the Church in any age, was
the union of the religious and secular ministries carried
to such an identity. We may well, then, rejoice to-day
in the return of these times of mutual joy. A Bene-

304 UNITY IN DIVERSITY

dictine cathedral, with a seminary by its side, is a type
of what once was, and if the Church of England is to
do its great work of grace, of what, whether by this
same identification, or by the harmonious unity of
our two great ministries, must be again.

We are here, indeed, as I have said, for a great
festival ; and the law and truth it teaches us is this —
that Secular and Religious are but names of distinction
for those who are vitally necessary each to the other,
and in all their diversity of action indivisibly one.
We are one in the interior life and spirit which is
common to all; we are distinct in the diversities
of instrumental gifts, and of special ministries
intrusted to us.

God has variously enriched us with divers gifts, and
distinguished the ministries of His Church with a
diversity of instruments for the accomplishment of one
only end. To some He has given the power of juris-
diction, and placed them on thrones to be the judges
and rulers of men ; to some, the pastoral commission, to
feed, to fold, and to give account for souls ; to some, the
lights and distinctions, the angelic illuminations, and
the seraphic unctions of scientific theology; to some,
the gifts of prayer, the ways of meditation, contempla-
tion, andrecollection ; to some,thegifts of spiritual tact
and intuition to guide us to perfection ; to some, the

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 305

burning zeal of apostles, the activity of evangelists
upon the mountains, and their insatiable thirst for
souls; to some, again, the gifts of silence and of
prayer, of vision by faith, and of great power with
God. But all these worketh the self -same Spirit,
reaching from end to end through the centuries of
the Church, and sweetly ordering all things in abso-
lute unity and love.

Such, then, is our festival to-day. We are come to
rejoice with our religious brethren in this day of
their joy, and their joy is ours.

There are two lessons taught us by ail the Saints of
God. The one is, that they and we, Religious and
Secular, as our names may be, are bound by law of our
supernatural existence to love each other's perfection ;
the other, that we ought to rejoice in each other's
works. Rome, our mother and guide in all things, is
especially so in this. For round about the throne of
the Supreme Pontiff, the head and father of the
apostolic Hierarchy in the world, are gathered, as
for protection, the great families of the Saints. St.
Benedict is there, and St. Francis, and St. Dominic,
St. Ignatius, and St. Alphonsus, and St. Vincent, and
Blessed Paul, and a multitude beside. It is the law
of their very life and perfection that they should

gather round the Rock, from whose foot these living

20

306 UNITY IN ADVERSITY

sources of the manifold perfections of the Church
pour forth their streams.

It has ever been a mark of the Saints, whether of
the Secular or of the Religious life, that they have re-
joiced in the sanctity and fruits each of the other.
All who would prosper must, like them, be large in
charity and generous in their joy.

I know not where a better example can be found
than the great Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, the light
and glory of the Secular clergy, who is pictured to this
day on the walls of the house of the Chiesa Nuova,
with St. Philip and St. Ignatius, his friends and
familiars, one on either side ; and in the corridor of
the great Capuchin convent in Rome, sitting beside St.
Felix Cantalicius, a poor lay-brother, to whom he sub-
mitted the rule of the greatest work of his life. In
Milan, to this day,, in token of his intimate love of the
Religious and of their perfection, there are still shown,
in the houses of the Capuchins and of the Barnabites,
the cells to which he was wont to withdraw to unite
himself more closely with them and with God.

My Religious brethren will then forgive me, if I
seem over-bold to say that not only we have a part in
them, but that they are ours. In the name of the
Holy See, and of the whole Hierarchy of the Church,
we claim them as our own. Their works are ours,

THE PERFECTION OF THE CHURCH. 307

and ours theirs, and our joys are common, because in
the unity of the one body of Jesus we are indivisibly
united. And all the variety and beauty which adorn
the two great ministries of the Church ; all the power
of intellect and speech, the energy of will, the great-
ness of heart ; all the supernatural perfections of the
Spirit by which they are elevated and enriched ; all
the graces and ministrations, operations, and gifts,
with all their intricate diversity of action, which are
incorporated and clothed by the Hierarchy, in all its
degrees, in the Religious Orders and in all their
branches, — these all are the counterpart of the glories
of the first creation of God, in which fruit, and
flower, and leaf, and the harvests of the field, and
the trees of the forest, are all beautiful but all
diverse ; no two, even within the same kind, alike,
but all in harmony : and a prelude of the new crea-
tion, when the jasper, the crystal, the sapphire and
the emerald, the sardonyx, the chrysolite, the beryl
and the topaz, and the splendour in the walls of the
heavenly city, are all distinct, but all harmonious in
the light of the glory of God and of the Lamb ; and
the many accents of the many languages and nations
and peoples and tongues are mingled in the one ac-
claim of praise, which day and night goes up, as one
voice from one heart, before the Eternal Throne.

IX.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

•

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY OF THE ANGELS
BAYSWATER, ON THE FEAST OF ST. CHARLES.

1860.

TO

HIS EMINENCE NICHOLAS,

CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.

MY LORD CARDINAL,

In dedicating this Sermon to your Eminence, I do not seek
to give to it either worth or importance, which even your name
could not do. But to whom can I better inscribe it than to you,
the father and founder of the Oblates of St. Charles in the diocese
of Westminster ? It was your command alone that constrained
me to attempt a work which I know to have been for more than
twenty years in your intention. Your name obtained for it, in the
outset, a rescript of the Holy See, imparting the apostolical bene-
diction ; your counsel has directed it ; and your authority guided
all its course.

The Feast of St. Charles has never passed without your presence,
except last year, when from your bed of sickness you wrote to us
your words of encouragement and support. And this year, after
twelve months, as I too well know, of perilous and protracted suf-
fering, you came again among us to share and to complete the joy
of our Festival.

As a record of our gratitude for all these tokens of your affec-
tion, I pray you to accept from me, in the name of all, this imper-
fect expression of our filial attachment.

I have the honour to be,

My Lord Cardinal,
Your Eminence's obedient servant,

H. E. MANNING.

ST. MART OP THE AUGELS, BAYSWATEB,
November 14, 1860.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

" The Good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep.' —
St. John, x, 11.

GOD has promised by the prophet Daniel that " they
who are learned shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament; and they who instruct many to justice, as
the stars for all eternity."* We have seen the fulfil-
ment of this prophecy in the glory of His heavenly
court. In the Festival of All Saints we beheld this
firmament in all its brightness, spread before our eyes ;
the whole Hierarchy of His elect now in the beatific
vision has seemed to encompass us in its multitude and
splendour. And yet where all are glorious, some shine
with a softer beauty, or burn with an intenser radi-
ance ; some are luminous with a fuller orb of power,
or reign among the companies of Heaven with a more
majestic light of glory. If, then, a special bliss be
the inheritance of those who have instructed many
to justice, what shall be the array of the great pastor
of souls whom we commemorate to-day?

It is, indeed, a custom on such days as this to invite
some stranger to speak of our patrons. It is thought

* Dan., xii, 3.

312 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

to be more graceful that another should praise them,
lest the partiality of sons should overrate the greatness
of their fathers, and claim for them too high a dignity
among the Saints of God. Forgive me if I depart from
this custom to-day ; for it ought not to seem unfitting
that they should speak of their patrons, who ought,
by experience, best to know their power with God.

In other years this Festival has fallen on the days of
work and worldly toil, so that none but those who have
command of time have been able to be here. But this
year it falls upon our day of rest; all, even to the
least and the busiest, may share in our rejoicing. It is
a gathering of our own flock ; and I speak therefore to
our own people. There can surely then be no unfit-
ness on a domestic festival like this, that I should speak
to you of the glorious and powerful protector under
whose guidance and patronage we labour among you.
To one thing I shall certainly not be tempted; I
mean, to extol St. Charles by comparisons or by con-
trasts with other Saints. Such a course would be
doubly ungraceful in us : for one special perfection
of his great spirit was the love he bore to all the
Saints of the Church, and to all their works for God.

Nevertheless, in order to discern the peculiar and
special character of St. Charles, I may be permitted to
distinguish that which is singular both in him and in

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 313

them ; and by ascertaining the difference, to appreciate
his perfect and individual perfection. Now it has
seemed to me that of the three great saints whom God
raised up at one time, and knit together in a singular
mutual love,— St. Ignatius, St. Philip, and St. Charles,
each had a province of his own ; and all three worked
then, and work on still, with their several gifts, to one
and the same end. In St. Ignatius we see the intellect,
illuminated by sanctity, applied to the theology of the
Church, and through its theology, to its action upon
the world. In St. Philip, the heart, enlarged and in-
flamed by the Holy Ghost, kindling the fire of devotion
in pastor and people. But in St. Charles we see the
will — that which governs both heart and intellect —
raised and inspired with a supernatural energy, and
endowed with a dominion over himself and over the
whole Church of God. His whole life was calmness
and impetuosity, irresistible force and perpetual tran-
quillity ; with the power of the intellect always in
energy, and the affections of the heart always in ex-
pansion, he went onward with a perseverance which
never gave back, or turned aside. The two chief cha-
racteristics of his perfection were comprehensiveness
and intensity : a comprehensiveness which took in the
whole activity of the Church; an intensity which
urged his powers, both natural and supernatural, to

314 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

their highest pitch, and there kept them unrelaxed at
their fullest extent of force. For this reason it is diffi-
cult to characterise him by any particular work or
enterprise, for all seemed to fall in turn within his
sphere. St. Charles may be said to be emphatically
the saint of the Holy See, of the universal Episcopate,
of the Priesthood, and of the whole Church. Now it
would not be in place to-day to dwell upon his relation
either to the Holy See or to the Hierarchy of the
Church. In speaking to you, I more naturally turn to
contemplate St. Charles as the saint of the laity; and,
though he may be thought rather the saint of pastors,
I hope to show that in his character there are special
examples to the whole flock. My purpose, then, will
be to view him as the good shepherd — as the image of
the Son of God in the life of pastoral care, properly so
called ; distinct, that is, from the life of perfection, as
we see it in St. Philip, and from the apostolic life, as
we see it in St. Francis Xavier ; the toilsome pastor's
life, in charge with a special flock, spending and being
spent for his sheep inauniformand persevering fidelity
to the hour of death. In this I hope to show that his
example and character are full of minute and intimate
instruction for all the faithful. In doing so I shall not
attempt to draw out his history, or to narrate his life ;
forasmuch as it is full of detail so minute, that it would

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 315

be impossible now to draw even its outline. All that
I can venture to attempt is, in some way to appreciate
his character and its admonitions to us.

As to his life and time, it is enough to say that St.
Charles was born in the year 1538, just at the moment
when Henry VIII began to separate England from
the unity of the Church of God ; and that he entered
upon his active life in 1563, when the persecutions of
Elizabeth were in their first outbreak. From that
time till 1585, a period of two-and-twenty years, he
ran his course with an energy of self-sacrifice which
consumed his young life as a holocaust of zeal.
Zelus domus tuce comedit me. He gave his life for
his sheep. My purpose then, as I have said, will be
only to trace the outline of this most masculine and
majestic character; and to touch on one or two of
its marking features, which may serve more directly
as examples to ourselves.

The first mark which strikes us in the character of
St. Charles is the greatness of his mission and of his
aims. It was a wonderful providence which, in such
an age of inveterate disorder, raised up a youth to
renew the face of the Church.* The heresies and

* Giussano relates, that when St. Charles was a child, he was one
day lost for some hours. At last he was found in a solitary cham-
ber, arranging a number of apples in order. When asked why he
was there, he said, " I am portioning out the world."

316 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

schisms of the Protestant Reformation had run a
course of nearly fifty years, and had become rooted
and obstinate by long success, when St. Charles
entered upon his active life. At an age when other
men are still among their books and studies, he
began to wield an almost unbounded power. At
the age of twenty-two he was created Cardinal, and
by the side of his uncle Pius IV controlled the
administration of the Holy See.

In this office his first care was the direction of the
great Council of Trent. St. Charles may be said to
be its very life. His will was its support; he urged
forward its sessions ; and directed its deliberations by
stated and continual correspondence from Rome. So
minute and prompt were his communications with the
Council, that its couriers were admitted to him at all
hours of the day or night. His firmness sustained it to
the end, and carried it to its conclusion. This great
work accomplished, he entered upon another still more
arduous — the execution of its decrees. As Cardinal
Archbishop he reformed the great Church of Milan —
its clergy, religious, and people ; so that next after
Rome, Milan has ever been the light and model of the
Church. The reformation of St. Charles appears di-
vinely appointed to contrast with and to condemn the
human reformations which even then were at work

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 317

in England and elsewhere. Just at the time when in
Germany and in England the innovations which have
dissolved all faith, and issued in heresies, and schisms,
in rationalism, and apostasy from the Christian name,
were accomplishing, St. Charles laid the foundations
of a reform, which, resting upon the principles of
Divine faith and order, have continued in perfect
unity and unchanging solidity to this day.

The great Council of Trent had laid down the basis
of the ecclesiastical reformation of the Church in these
later ages; and in executing its decrees St. Charles
became the legislator for the Church of future genera-
tions. Vast as his work was in its own day, its great-
ness was but the prelude of that which was to come.
As in the publication of the Profession of Faith, called
the Creed of Pius IV, and in the Catechism of the
Council of Trent, he had brought within the intel-
ligence of the faithful at large its dogmatic decrees ; so
by twenty years of ecclesiastical legislation, in a line
of seven Provincial Councils and of eleven Diocesan
Synods, he treated of every duty, function, and obli-
gation of the sacerdotal life, and of all that belongs to
the order of the Church, the administration of holy
Sacraments, and the discipline of the faithful. The
two volumes of the Acts of the Church of Milan, if
not all from the pen of St. Charles, are the product of

318 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

his mind. They may be called a commentary on the
Council of Trent, and an amplification and develop-
ment of its decrees. They treat of every thing,
from the office of the Episcopate to the minutest
detail of the Church. They have become the direc-
tory of Bishops and the rule of Synods. The judg-
ments of St. Charles have passed as precedents in -the
ecclesiastical government of the world, and his dicta
as the counsels, or even the precepts, of ecclesiastical
perfection. No one individual mind has, perhaps,
ever laid so broad and tenacious a hold upon the
Church at large. He seerns to have entered into its
will, and to have controlled its active powers, and
given a direction to all its operations.

To this greatness of aim and enterprise, St. Charles
added an extraordinary minuteness and industry in the
execution of his works. He seemed to be present every-
where, to direct all things, and to do all things. The
whole complex administration of theprovince of Milan,
which extended from Venice to Genoa, and into the
Swiss valleys, with its fifteen suffragan Bishops and
more than two thousand churches in the diocese of
Milan alone, in all its minutest details, seemed to ema-
nate from him and return into him again. He was the
life of the Provincial and Diocesan Councils of which I
have spoken. They were directed by his mind, and in

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 319

great part written by his own hand. They descend
into the least particulars, all of which passed through
his cognisance, and were executed under his eye.
We find appended to his life a schedule of the audi-
ences given every day of the week to the adminis-
trators of congregations, councils, colleges, and
confraternities; of functions and visits to be dis-
charged every month; and of solemnities to be
observed at stated periods every year. Not a moment
of his time was without its object, and all his employ-
ments had a perfect order and succession.

It would be impossible to enumerate the institutions
which he founded. His first act on entering his archi-
episcopal see was to establish the Confraternity of the
Most Holy Sacrament in every parish. On the third
Sunday of the month, all the parishes of the city united
in a procession at the Duomo. He awakened Milan
to a consciousness of the presence of the Incarnate
Word, which penetrated into all its streets, and made
itself visible to all its population. He enthroned Jesus
in the see from which he ruled ; and the love of the
Sacred Heart became the centre of his reforms. To
this he added the Confraternity of the Penitents of the
Cross ; and again, because he knew that the source of
all spiritual and moral evil and of the deep corruptions
by which his diocese was afflicted, was to be found in

320 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

ignorance of the faith and of the will of God, he
founded the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, — of
men for boys, and of women for girls,— which continues
vigorous and efficient to this day. The constitution of
this Confraternity was co-extensive with the diocese.
It consisted of a supreme council under the direction
of a priest, resident in Milan, and responsible only to
himself. The other officers were laymen ; a prior and
sub-prior, with consultors and visitors, and other in-
ferior officers. In every parish a similar council was
established. To these were added a body of catechists
and of pescatori as he called them, or fishermen, whose
office it was to traverse the whole city, especially on
the festivals ; to enter places of amusement, the haunts
of sin, as well as the streets and the piazzas of the city ;
and not only to admonish and to warn, but actually to
bring the young and the old, the children and the
adults, to receive instruction, or to prepare for the
Sacraments. Every month the council of each parish
reported its progress to the superior council, by which
a monthly report was laid before St. Charles in person.
The visitors of the supreme council continually went
their rounds from parish to parish, to keep alive the
zeal and the industry of the officers and teachers. At
his death, St. Charles left behind him by this one
Confraternity upwards of 700 schools, 275 superior

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 32 1

officers, 1726 inferior officers, 3040 catechists, and
40,000 scholars. I have seen this system in vigorous
action in the Church of the Oblate Fathers, at Rh6.
On Sundays the nave of the Church is curtained off,
and subdivided for the classes, which are five in num-
ber, varying from children to adults ; each have their
special teachers ; and office-bearers are appointed to go
to and fro to maintain order and attention. It is to be
remembered that the whole of this extensive and
efficient system is composed of laymen, into whom St.
Charles inspired somewhat of his own patient toil and
burning zeal for souls. I may say that he created
them for this work, and called them into existence
to be the fellow-helpers of his pastoral care.

It would be out of place to speak at this time of his
mighty influence in restoring and raising the Priest-
hood of his diocese to an imitation of himself ; but I
cannot pass in silence the work which he called his
" delight." After he had for many years formed and
matured his clergy to a higher life, he chose out those
who were the most perfect and conformed to his own
spirit. He united them in a community, and gave to
them a rule written by his own hand. They bound
themselves to him by an oblation, from which they
took their name. He formed them to direct his semi-
naries, to prepare for the visitation of his diocese, to

21

322 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

direct parishes, to be about his own person, and to dis-
charge whatsoever office he might lay upon them.
To them he committed the Church and House of San
Sepolcro, which became the centre of his active works.
He erected schools, colleges^ and seminaries of a higher
instruction for every class. He instituted colleges of
various professions: physicians, lawyers, magistrates,
and the like. He inspired into the laity a like spirit
of generous devotion; and in the rule of his Oblates
provided that laymen also should offer themselves to
him by an oblation to serve the poor and afflicted : the
physician by his skill, the lawyer by his counsel, the
tradesman by his art, without payment or recompense.
Perhaps no pastor ever wielded the hearts of his laity
with such a commanding sway of love and confidence,
or ever awakened on so large a scale, or guided with
such perfect organization, their active charity. The
discipline which is thought to belong to the clergy
alone^ was, by his prudence and persuasive zeal, ex-
tended to men of the world j they became his fellow-
workers, not only one by one, but in masses, bound by
rule and perfect unity of action. He established also
in the Church of San Sepolcro, missions and retreats
for women of every class, — the high born, matrons,
and servants. These are but the general heads, and
few out of many of the spiritual industries, whereby

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 323

he pervaded the whole population of Milan and the
diocese. He participated in them all, and was himself
present, as it were, in all these labours ; for he had
eminently the gift of the greatest minds : not that of
attempting all things in person, but that of creating
and multiplying agents for his works, and of inspiring
them freely of their own will to accomplish his inten-
tions ; so that while they laboured, all their works
were his.

Another conspicuous feature of his character was the
invincible fortitude with which he endured opposition
and exposed his life. The greater part of his episcopate
was spent in a contest for the liberties of the Church.
The civil powers of the Spanish government in Milan
and in Spain endeavoured to intimidate him by threats,
and even by violence. He never gave way for an
hour, and never failed in every conflict to gain his
cause. His more serious trials were from unworthy
and disorderly priests, and from religious Orders which
had lost their observance. The Chapter of La Scala
was notoriously relaxed. St. Charles gave notice of
an episcopal visit. He arrived at the church upon his
mule, with his archiepiscopal cross borne before him.
Some of the canons seized the reins of his mule, and
rudely thrust him back, while others shut the doors of
the church against him. He alighted, and, with his

324 THE GOOD SHEPHERD

archiepiscopal cross in his hand, proceeded to the doors
of the church. Shots were fired at him, which struck
and mutilated the cross as he held it. He returned to
the Duomo, and knelt before the Blessed Sacrament;
after which he excommunicated the canons of La
Scala, who, in the end, after much obstinacy, were
compelled to submit. In another case his life was only
preserved by miracle. The Umiliati, whose disorders
he was vigorously reforming, suborned a murderer to
destroy him. One evening, when St. Charles was
kneeling with his familia at night-prayers in his
chapel, while the choir were singing Tempus est ut
revertar ad eum qui misit me, and Ne turbetur cor ves-
trum neque formidetj the assassin fired within a few
paces of his person. The bullet struck him in the
back. He fell forward on his face ; and though be-
lieving his wound to be mortal, he again lifted him-
self, and continued to the end of his prayer. He was
then supported to the sacristy; and on examination it
was found that the ball had not even pierced his
rochet,* but had left a black mark upon the flesh,
which continued to his death. Other shots from the

* The rochet in which St. Charles was struck was given by Pius
VII to the Cathedral in Bordeaux, and a large portion of this pre-
cious relic was sent, by the kindness of the Cardinal Archbishop
of Bordeaux, to the Oblates of Westminster, a week before the
Feast of St. Charles.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 325

same explosion had pierced the hard wood on either
side of him.

But his fortitude was still more conspicuously shown,
when for months he gave his life, day by day and
hour by hour, with a perpetual renewal of the gene-
rosity of the Good Shepherd, in ministering to the
dying in the great plague of Milan. His whole life
then was a continual oblation of himself. All the day
long he gave his life for his sheep; fearless and in-
flexible when others fled, and only desiring to win the
crown of martyrdom by charity. The same spirit of
uniform and inflexible perseverance sustained him
without variation and without remission in his life of
labour; neither mind nor will had any reserve. All
his powers were urged habitually to their highest
point, and he consumed away in their perpetual tension
and activity. More he could not do, for nature had
reached its utmost ; and less he could not, for the zeal
which ever consumed him. His short life was long,
because of its intensity, and ascended as a continual
sacrifice till it was accomplished. Consummatus in
brevi, explemt tempora multa, as the Church of Milan
sings in the Ambrosian rite upon his festival.

It might be thought that, in a character so great
and comprehensive, so vigorous and unrelaxed, so full
of fortitude and of perseverance, a certain hardness

326 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

would prevail, or, at least, the softer qualities be
wanting ; but it was not so. St. Charles was as eminent
for tenderness as for force of character : nothing more
beautiful can be found than the character of the man
which lay concealed under the energy of his archiepis-
copal life. If we would know St. Charles as he was in
himself, we must see him in his familia, in the private
life of his household. It consisted of a hundred persons
of all nations, characters, and ages. It was ordered
almost as a religious house, with division of time, medi-
tation in common, exercises of piety, perpetual industry
of study and of business. It was an austere life, with
many mortifications, and yet so sweet and attractive
that men of every kind sought to enter it. When once
entered, they scarcely ever left it; for they loved him
as sons, and he loved them as a father. It is beau-
tiful to read the little traits of his tenderness towards
them. He would call them in the morning, and light
their lamps. After they were gone to rest at night,
while he was waking with the cares of his state, he
would walk to and fro throughout the house barefoot,
lest he should awake them. The sick he nursed with
his own hands ; the morose and difficult he bore with
inexhaustible patience. There was one whose beha-
viour to him was such that his household prayed for
his dismissal. St. Charles kept him to the last. He

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 327

would dismiss none, except for sin. The only fault
he would never pardon was a lie. Those that grew
old in his service, he supported with the tenderest
care ; and if any refused to stay with him, he sent
them away with abundant gifts. In the visitations
of his diocese, he would sleep upon the floor or upon
a table, to give his bed to his attendants.

His compassion to the poor had no bounds. Even
when he was twelve years old, he refused to apply to
his own use the revenues of an abbacy which he
inherited : he prayed his father to bestow all its
revenues upon the poor. His father, who was a man
of God, and lived alife of singular devotion, confessing
and communicating every week, and reciting daily an
office upon his knees, discerned the operations of the
Holy Ghost in his child, and granted his desire. In
after-life the same spirit of compassion was confirmed
in him; whatsoever came to him, he sold and dis-
tributed to the poor. At one time, during the plague,
60,000 poor were fed daily by his alms. He stripped
his house even of its furniture to clothe them.

But his tenderness maybe more strikingly perceived
in his personal dealing with the poor. In his archie-
piscopal visitations through the diocese, he would sit by
the wayside to teach a poor man to make the sign of
the Cross, and to say the Pater and Ave. He entered

328 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

the homes and the hovels of his flock ; and while his
attendants would hardly pass the threshold for the repul-
sive stench of these poor dwellings, St. Charles would
sit by their hearth as if he had no sense. We read also,
that, as he sat to share the food of some poor family,
he sharply rebuked one of his attendants who brought
him a spoon of metal instead of a spoon of wood,
which he was using like the rest. Nevertheless, traits
of his tenderness are to be found throughout his life.
They are not isolated acts, but the texture of his
character. They describe not his condescension, — a
word that implies assumed superiority, — but the pro-
found humility which he chose for his legend and
manifested in his person. In his dealings with the
poor, they never felt his greatness. His presence was
no burden ; and his acts of humility had such a delicate
grace and such a sensitive forbearance, that the lowest
were at ease with him. It was the gentleness and the
attraction of the Great Shepherd of the sheep ; for the
Sacred Heart burned and beat in his, and made him
to be the rest and solace of his flock. And yet this
tenderness had in it no mere softness, no weak
emotions, or effeminate sensibility : it was a firm and
truthful sympathy ; the genuine fellow-feeling of a
soul conformed to the Sacred Humanity of Jesus in
its vast and profound compassion.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 329

Once more. It might also be thought, that in a life
of such unresting toil and ceaseless occupation, there
could have been no time for prayer, no love for the
interior spirit of devotion ; and yet whole hours he
spent upon his knees before the tabernacle or the
Exposition in the Duomo, or in the crypt of San
Sepolcro, or in the cells of the Capuchins and of the
Barnabites. Long hours of the morning, before busi-
ness began, were spent in mental prayer. He would
do nothing until he had celebrated the Holy Mass.
It seems incredible how he could have found the
time ; but the use and order of his day was so minute
and so exact, that he seemed never to be in haste, and
to have leisure for every duty. It may be said, that
his whole life was prayer; for all his works were
begun and ended in the presence of God. They did
not distract him from union with his Lord ; but were
so penetrated with the intention and spirit of devo-
tion, that every several action had the nature of
prayer. We read that when present in the choir, he
was sometimes so rapt in union with God, that the
master of ceremonies had need to rouse him to recite
the office. In his journeys he was lost in prayer as he
went ; and once we read that his mule fell with him
by the wayside. It was dark, and his retinue passed
by. Some time after, finding that he was not with

330 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

them, they returned, and found him unconscious of
what had happened, and praying where he fell.

His chief devotion was to the Passion of our Lord.
It is not wonderful that such a life of toil and of the
Cross should have found its special food and solace in
the sufferings of Jesus. It was in the school of the
Passion that his masculine spirit had been formed, and
it is the Passion alone that forms such spirits as St.
Charles. We are told that above all he was devoted
to two particular mysteries : the agony of Jesus in the
garden, and His burial in the tomb. I have often
tried to find the reason of this choice. It is not,
indeed, wonderful that a life of such self-discipline,
and of such self-chastisement, and of such self-sacrifice
should have found its light and its replenishment in
the agony of Gethsemani, and in the words, " Not
My will, but Thine be done." His whole life was a
subjection of his sensitive will to his superior will, and
of both alike to the will of God ; and he well knew
by long trial some shadow at least of that great in-
terior anguish which poured forth its life-blood in the
Garden of Olives. But why he should have chosen
the burial of Jesus is not so easy to understand, unless
it be that he saw in it the last crowning humiliation of
God, — dead, and buried out of sight by the hands of
his creatures; and because he saw, too, the pledge

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 331

and the promise of the rest for which he longed, — the
rest after death, the only rest laid up in store for him.

But I have said both too little and too much : too
little to give any conception of the masculine and
tender character of this glorious Saint; too much,
because it might seem that what is but a fragment is
all that could be told. I must hasten, therefore, to
the end.

As he lived, so he died. He had the instinct of
death upon him, and dropped many words of prepa-
ration to those about him. He then set forth to make
his retreat at the Calvary of Varallo, in the midst of
representations of the Passion of Jesus. As he knelt
before the agony in Gethsemani, his last sickness
struck him. Nevertheless, he persevered, or rather
his austerities increased. He slept on bare boards,
and his food was bread and water. One day two
young students came upon him as he knelt before the
mystery of the burial of Jesus: he invited them to
stay with him ; and morning by morning, as his wont
was, he would light their lamps, and wake them.
His confessor was with him in retreat; and as he
passed through his chamber, while he was yet sleep-
ing, he would make a reverence to him, in honour of
our Lord, whom he regarded in his person. So he
passed his last days of preparation. The fever began

332 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

to grow upon him, and his life to ebb sensibly away.
He set out for Milan, and embarked at Arona to pass
the Lake of Como, to finish the establishment of the
college at Ascona. As he went over, he said the
Litanies with the boatmen who rowed him, and exa-
mined them whether they could say the Pater, Ave,
and Credo ; and he made them promise him never to
go to their work without saying their morning prayers.
The spirit of the Good Shepherd was upon him
everywhere and at all times. The weight of his last
sickness did not slacken his zeal for souls. So he
journeyed slowly homewards, preaching and instruct-
ing as he went. When he reached his palace, the
sickness became soon hopeless. He lay with the pic-
tures of the Agony in the Garden and of the Burial
hung before him ; and while multitudes were on their
knees in prayer before the presence of the Most Holy
Sacrament exposed in the Duomo, he received the
Holy Viaticum as a pastor should die, in his rochet
and stole, surrounded by his flock. On the night of
Saturday, the 3rd of November, his short life, con-
sumed with labours for the glory of God and for the
salvation of his flock, was spent; and he entered upon
his first and his endless rest. His last words, like to
the last words of Jesus as He bowed His head, upon
the Cross, were Ecce> venio, " Behold, I come;" and

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 333

with a calm so great that they who were nearest could
hardly tell the moment of his departure, he passed to
the joy of his Lord. He died the Good Shepherd's
death, worn out and wearied with toil for the flock ;
consumed as a sacrifice of love for the souls for whom
his Master died. It was not long before the conscious-
ness that he was in the glory of the Saints began to
spread abroad. About three hours after his death, his
confessor was sleeping ; St. Charles appeared to him
in a raiment of surpassing splendour, and encompassed
by the effulgence of heavenly light. Believing,
through the effect of sleep, that the Saint was still
lying in his sickness, he expressed his wonder. St.
Charles said to him, Dominus mortificat, Dominus
autem vivificat, "the Lord giveth death, and the Lord
giveth life." He then perceived that he was impas-
sible and glorious. Again : twice he appeared to one
of his priests, who was grieving out of measure for
his loss, saying, " Grieve not for me; for I am in the
bliss of the Lord." He foretold to him the death
of the then reigning Pontiff, which was soon after
verified; and the afflictions of his beloved city of
Milan, which have never ceased until this day.

Such was St. Charles : great and masculine in his
powers, tender and compassionate in his charity ; a
true pastor of Jesus Christ, shaped and fashioned to

334 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

the mould of the Sacred Heart. In his day he ruled
the Church of God, and laid his hand upon all the
springs of its power. The whole activity of the
Church received his direction; and his spirit has
penetrated into its very structure, and gives laws to
its Hierarchy, to its Councils, and to its Schools.

Such he was whom I have endeavoured to sketch
in outline, and such the comprehensiveness and the
intensity of the will which, in a few short years, con-
sumed the life of this great Servant of God. But it is
time to make an end : for on so great a subject, all that
I can say would be but little, and the more I say, the
more ought to be said to give any proportion to the
outline of so great a life. He is, indeed, the special
example to the Priesthood, the light and glory of the
secular clergy ; but it is not so that I would consider
him to-day. Enough to say that he has taught the
priest to know that he is called to be perfect; that he
may aim at no lower standard ; that he may take no
lax indulgence ; that his whole life, with all its powers
and faculties, is consecrated ; that the Priesthood itself
is, as Saints have said, the sign of perfection attained
already ; and that this perfection is to be acquired only
by obedience, — by the religious in conformity to their
state, by the secular priest in obedience to the law
of liberty, in the generous use of his freedom, and in

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 335

charity, which makes no reserves of self. And this
twofold law of the sacerdotal life he incorporated and
made perpetual in the Congregation of the Oblates
of St. Ambrose, the mature fruit and perpetual
record of his great episcopate.

The last words shall be of the lessons he has given
to laymen. He taught them detachment from the
world. He was himself of noble birth, rich with
ample inheritance, surrounded by the privileges of
his class, invested with all dignities and powers, next
to the Supreme Pontificate ; and yet he was detached
from all. All these things were little in proportion
to his moral greatness. They could not elevate him ;
they had neither fascination nor worth in his eyes,
except as means of doing the Will of God. In this
he speaks to the rich; while to those also of an
humbler state, his voluntary poverty gives a perfect
rule of simplicity and indifference.

He is a pattern likewise of generosity, not only
in his boundless alms, but in the unselfish spirit of
his life, in the dedication of all his time and powers,
solicitude and sympathy, to those who needed help.
He teaches the rich to be generous also for the glory
of God and the beauty of His Church, in the splen-
dour of his zeal and the vastness of his gifts. He
teaches all in like manner that the busiest life may

336 THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

be a life of prayer; that perpetual toil need bring no
hindrance to the union of the will with God. No
man of the world was ever taxed to his full strength
more than he. No one had so great right to plead
his unceasing work as an excuse for dispensation in
the practices of prayer. We make our little cares,
our common duties, our trade or our profession, a
plea for shortening our devotions, or leaving our
conscience unexamined, or postponing our confes-
sion. He worked always, and he prayed always;
for his prayer and his work were one.

Another example he has given to laymen is a zeal
for souls. He set in activity the educated laymen of
Milan to catch, one by one, the souls that were perish-
ing; and to count one soul an over-payment of all
their toil, and the mere labour for their salvation itself
an ample reward. And to all this he added one other
lesson, most needful to the laity as well as to the priest
— a filial, loyal love to the person of the Vicar of
Jesus Christ, whom he never named without uncover-
ing his head, and a docile and glad obedience to the
Holy See, the lightest judgment of which to him had
force of law. But it would be endless to speak on
such a theme. It must be enough to set before you
his life of unwearied duty as a good soldier of Jesus
Christ, and his tenderness as the Good Shepherd who

THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 337

gave his life for his sheep. It was a mixture of gra-
vity and sweetness, of calm and of intensity, of invin-
cible courage and exquisite compassion. It was a
character high and stern, yet loving and gentle;
severe in its reality and in the majesty of truth. He
teaches all men that their work is what they are ; that
to do one thing and to be another is a falsehood and
impossible; that if they would teach men to serve
God, they must do His will; if they would bring
souls to contrition, they must live in penance: if they
would kindle hearts with the love of God, their
hearts must burn within them ; that we are not what
we seem to others, nor what we think ourselves, but
what we are before God, and neither more nor less : —
to such he is the special patron, example, and father,
and for such he ever prays, kneeling with out-
stretched palms before the Eternal Throne.

X.

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD
SHEPHERD.

PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL OF THE BENEDICTINE CONVENT,

HAMMERSMITH, AT THE DELIVERY OF THE PALLIUM TO

THE MOST REVEREND FERDINAND ENGLISH, LATE

ARCHBISHOP OF THE PORT-OF-SPAIN.

1861.

THE

MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

«' Et levavit pallium Eliae."
" And he took up the mantle of Elias." — IV Kings, ii, 13.

SUCH was the pledge of power bequeathed by the
Prophet to his chief disciple and successor upon earth.
He had asked of his master the gift of " his double
spirit" — that is, a twofold portion of the spirit of pro-
phecy and of power which had rested on Elias; — and
Elias answered, " Thou hast asked a hard thing.
Nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from
thee, thou shalt have what thou hast asked . . . And as
they went on walking and talking together, behold, a
fiery chariot and fiery horses parted them both asun-
der: and Elias went up by a whirlwind into Heaven.
And Eliseus saw him, and cried: My father, my
father, the chariot of Israel, and the driver thereof !
And he saw him no more . . . And he took up the
mantle of Elias that fell from him : and going back he
stood by the bank of the Jordan. And he struck the
waters with the mantle of Elias that fell from him,

342 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

and the waters were not divided. And he said : Where
is now the God of Elias? And he struck the waters,
and they were divided hither and thither, and Eliseus
passed over." There is a divine analogy in this mys-
terious action by which the chief of the Prophets
invested his successor with his own authority, and
endowed him with a double portion of his own spirit.
It was an act of power, like His who said, " Thou art
Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church:" " I
have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not:" " Feed
my sheep." Eliseus in the mantle of Elias was head
over all the sons of the Prophets ; and Peter in his
Master's stead was chief of all the Apostles and dis-
ciples of Jesus. In the ancient Latin version the
words run, " Et sustulit meloten Elise." And he
took up the garment of sheepskin, the shepherd's
garb of Elias, as Peter succeeded to the office of the
Good Shepherd and to the oversight of the whole
Flock on earth.

And such in its proportion is the act we celebrate
to-day. The Successor of Peter, and the Vicar of the
Good Shepherd, bestows the Pallium or token of spi-
ritual power upon a chief pastor of the Church of God.
It is perhaps the first time that most who are here
have been witnesses of the authoritative delivery of
the pall; and some, perhaps, may not know its full

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 343

and sacred import. It may be well, therefore, briefly
to trace out its meaning and intention.

When the great solemnities of Christmas and
Epiphany, with all their splendour and beauty, are
ended, there comes a Feast dear especially to Rome.
On the twenty-first of January is the martyrdom of
St. Agnes, the fair-haired child of fourteen years, the
type of all that is most graceful, noble, and heroic,
both in the order of nature and of grace — a lady of
patrician blood and a martyr of Jesus Christ. And
her Festival has a twofold solemnity in the two beau-
tiful churches sacred to her name: one in the city,
over the prisons, where she was miraculously guarded
by supernatural power ; one without the walls, where
she received her crown. In the early morning of her
Festival may be seen a stream of people ascending by
the streets of the Four Fountains, and then filling the
way to the Porta Pia. The old road which leads
towards Tibur is alive with a multitude moving on-
wards to the Church of St. Agnes. Romans, and
sojourners in Rome of every nation under Heaven,
ecclesiastics of every degree, princes of the Church,
prelates from every land, religious of every order,
priests of every rite, seminaries and colleges in their
various habits, and from every people, walking two
and two (among which the English College never

344 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

fails its place), with the Faithful of all states and con-
ditions, all drawn onward by one attraction to the
subterranean shrine of St. Agnes. St. Agnes' Day
is mostly bright and sunny. It falls at the time when
January softens off towards the first harbingers of
spring. The air is clear, and crisp, and cold, but with
a gentle warmth of sunlight ; and though there is
snow upon the mountains beyond the Sabine Hills,
yet the sprays in the gardens begin to redden with
the return of life. They who know the beauty of
this Festival will not be weary of these few words of
reminiscence of a day so sweet to memory. They
will recal the wonderful antique beauty of the subter-
ranean church, with its tribune resting on columns of
marble surrounding its three sides, from which the
multitude kneeling below before the high altar seem
like a vision of the catacombs. In the midst of the
Holy Mass an unwonted offering, full of natural and
symbolical beauty, is introduced, interweaving itself
with the memory of the spotless Saint, and of the un-
blemished Church of God, and of the Lamb which
taketh away the sins of the world. Two spotless
lambs are brought before the altar, and dedicated to a
sacred use; that is, to yield of their wool the palliums
of Patriarchs, Primates, and Archbishops consecrated
in the year. Perhaps no better example could be

TEE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 345

found of the minute and vigilant care with which the
Catholic Church provides for the perpetuity of its
usages. The duty of overseeing the making and cus-
tody of the palls belongs to the apostolic subdeacons,
who take care that they shall be made of pure white
wool, in the following way. The nuns of the Monas-
tery of St. Agnes offer every year two white lambs
upon the altar of that church, upon the feast of their
Saint, while the Agnus Dei is being sung in the Solemn
Mass. They are then taken by two canons of St.
John Lateran, and by them delivered to the apostolic
subdeacons, who send them to pasture till the time for
shearing. When shorn, the wool is wrought up into
palls, which are woven three fingers wide, and then
united in a circle to go round the neck, having also a
short piece hanging on the breast and at the back ;
they have four crosses of black thread worked into
them. When made, the palls are carried by the apos-
tolic subdeacons to St. Peter's, and are placed by the
canons upon the tomb of the Apostle under the high
altar, on the eve of the feast, and are left there
through the night. They are blessed by the Sove-
reign Pontiff, and then restored to the custody of
the apostolic subdeacons. Such is the elaborate care
bestowed upon the making of the pallium, that the
canons of the two chief churches of the Lateran and

346 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

the Vatican, and the Successor of St. Peter, are all
required to concur in it.

Next, what is the import of this vestment? It is
granted by the Sovereign Pontiff to Patriarchs, Pri-
mates, Archbishops; and all such are bound, within
three months of their consecration, to supplicate the
pall from the Holy See under pain of deprivation.
Until they have received the pall, they can exercise
no act of greater jurisdiction, nor even assume the
title of Archbishop. They cannot convene synods,
or visit their province, or consecrate bishops. When
received, they can only wear the pall in the church,
and on certain festivals, and in certain acts. They
cannot transfer their pall to any other, nor transmit it
to a successor: each one must supplicate and obtain
his own pall. It becomes so a part of himself, that if
the Archbishop die before the pall designed for him
is delivered to him, it is to be burned, and the ashes
poured into the sacrarium. If he be translated to
another archbishopric, he must supplicate for a new
pall. When he dies, it is buried with him: if he has
received two, one is buried around his neck, and the
other under his head. Now, as the Church does no-
thing in vain, what is the significance of this minute
and peremptory usage? We may best learn it from
the words used in the act of benediction. The Sove-

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 347

reign Pontiff, after the vespers on the vigil of *St.
Peter and St. Paul, blesses them with holy water and
incense in these words : " O God, the Eternal Pastor of
souls, who hast called them by the name of sheep, and
by Jesus Christ thy Son hast committed them to be
ruled by blessed Peter the Apostle and his successors,
the type of the Good Shepherd, and hast ordained
that by the signs of sacred vestments the pastoral care
should be signified, pour out by our ministry upon
these palls, taken from the altar of thy blessed Apos-
tles, the abundant grace of thy blessing and sanctifica-
tion."* He then declares the pall to signify " the ful-
ness of the Pastoral office" — " pastoralis officii plenitu-
dinem;" and " the sheep laid upon the shoulders;"
"the cross;" " the light and sweet yoke upon the
neck ;" and finally, " the symbol of unity, the sign of
perfect communion with the Apostolic See, and bond
of charity" — "symbolum unitatis, et cum Apostolica
Sede communionis perfects tessera," " caritatis vincu-
lum:" that in the day of the coming revelation of
the great God and Chief Pastor Jesus Christ, together
with the sheep committed to Him, he who shall bear
it may obtain the stole of immortality and glory.
Such, then, is the meaning and import of the pallium.
It is a gift from St. Peter, " de corpore Beati Petri

* Ferraris Bibl. Can., in voc. Pallium.

348 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

sumptum," taken from his very person. It contains
and conveys a participation in the fulness of the Pas-
toral office. It is a personal privilege, investing the
wearer with an incommunicable power, which attaches
solely to himself. It signifies also the unity of the
Church and the charity of Rome. Let us draw out
these things somewhat more in order.

It is, in a word, a pledge of participation in the Pas-
toral office and vesture which Jesus conferred in ful-
ness on Peter, and from Peter is distributed in measure
to the chief pastors of the Church. For to Peter alone
was given the plenitude of jurisdiction over the whole
Flock of God. He alone had right of immediate di-
rection over all ; all others received their portion and
participation from him. " The other apostles," as St.
Cyprian says, " were what Peter was, endowed with
an equal honour and power;" and yet to Peter was
given a prerogative which no other received. All
alike were built into the foundation with him, but he
alone was still the Rock on which the foundation
rested. All received the power of the kej^s, but he
had them first and alone. All were ordained to the
Priesthood of Sacrifice, and commissioned to make
disciples of all nations, but to Peter were given those
great and sole prerogatives by which all these are
ordered and controlled. First, he was made the spe-

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 349

cial support of the faith of his brethren. " Satan hath
desired to have you" was spoken to all; but, "I have
prayed for tliee that thy faith fail not ; and when thou
art strengthened confirm thy brethren," was spoken to
Peter alone. Next, to him alone was committed the
whole flock, sheep and lambs. " Feed my sheep" was
spoken to no other, nor can any other exercise autho-
rity over the Flock of God except with and through
Peter. His jurisdiction extends over all the world.
The plenitude of the pastoral office descended from
Jesus to His vicar, and resides in him alone. And by
virtue of these prerogatives, Peter became the type
and the fountain of unity: the type, as a symbol to
express it as a law ; the fountain, because the unity
which flows from one binds all in one by a divine
relation of dependence and inherence. Jesus asso-
ciated Peter to Himself in the fulness of His office
and solicitude ; but others only to a part and to a
share. To all He gave the office of the apostleship ;
but to Peter the power to regulate its exercise. The
power of Order is one thing — the power of jurisdiction
is another. The power to preach, to baptize, to ab-
solve, resides habitually in every one who is validly
ordained ; the right to use that power comes from
another source. Every Priest possesses the power of
Order, but until he is put in charge with a particular

350 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

flock, he possesses no jurisdiction over souls. He has
the power of the Priesthood, but none on whom to
exercise it, until a flock is committed to him. Ordi-
nation invests his person with the sacerdotal character,
but this gives no authority over the souls of men.
This authority can descend only from the Vicar of
Jesus Christ, to whom the whole flock was alone com-
mitted. And as with the priest, so with the bishop.
Though validly consecrated, he has no jurisdiction
over a diocese until he receives it direct from the suc-
cessor of St. Peter, who alone can assign a portion of
the flock to his episcopal care. And as with the
bishop, so with the archbishop, to whom is committed
the care, not only of the flock, but also of the pastors.
Until invested with the pall from the tomb or person
of St. Peter, he can take no acts of jurisdiction. By
his consecration he is a bishop only, and a pastor of
the Faithful. By his investiture with the pallium he
becomes a pastor of pastors, and has jurisdiction over
the bishops of his province. And this is expressed by
the fact, that until invested with the pallium he can
do no archiepiscopal acts, as they are called, of the
greater jurisdiction — that is, of authority over the
bishops and pastors of the flock — nor can he even
take the name of Archbishop, because this authority
and name do not come by consecration to the

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 35 1

episcopate, but by the direct and sole authority and
grant of the successor of St. Peter and Vicar of
Christ.

And from this simple and beautiful principle of the
divine economy arises the Hierarchy of the Church,
in its complexity and symmetrical perfection. The
Apostles were organised around Peter into a perfect
unity of living energy and order. The Episcopate is
organised in like manner around the successor of
Peter. On him alone rests the care of all the
Churches. He is, as St. Avitus says, not so much a
single bishop as the Episcopate itself. From him
descend the Patriarchal powers. Wheresoever the
shadow of Peter fell or his foot had trod, a virtue
remained. Antioch and Alexandria for his sake be-
came patriarchal thrones, and, with Rome, represent
to the Church the authority of Peter: as St. Gregory
calls them, " one See in three places."* Then arose
Jerusalem, then Constantinople. In another order,
and from the earliest day, Primates and Metropolitans
bound together the Episcopate in its provinces, as
stars in constellations make up the unity of the firma-
ment. Then Archbishops, in lesser spheres of juris-
diction, completed the gradations of the Hierarchy,
from the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the fountain of all

* " Tribus locis una sedes." — S. Greg. M., torn. II, p. 888-9.

352 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

these derived and local jurisdictions over the pastors
of the Church, to the humblest Bishop of a missionary
see. This order of relation in the Hierarchy is of
ecclesiastical creation, and is constituted by the dis-
tribution of jurisdiction delegated to each in its mea-
sure and proportion by the successor of St. Peter, who
alone possesses the universal oversight of the whole
Church on earth ; or, in the words of the pontifical
benediction already cited, " For the Church which is
the chief of all so entrusts to the other Churches a con-
cession of its office, and they are called to a share, not
to the fulness of its power."* The Apostolate was
equal in all except in the sole supremacy of jurisdiction.
This invested St. Peter with a Primacy which bound
all in unity and harmony. The Episcopate likewise
is the same in all, from the episcopate of the Bishop of
Rome to the episcopate of the lowest bishop of the
Church ; but the gradations and distributions and pro-
portions of jurisdiction create an order of relation and
interdependence among the pastors of the Church, by
which all are compacted together in the unity of the
Catholic Hierarchy. Of this hierarchical order and
jurisdiction the pallium is the symbol.

* "Ipsa namque Ecclesia, quse prima est, ita reliquis ecclesiis
rices suas credit largiendas, ut in partem sint vocatse solicitudinis,
non in plenitudinera potestatis." — Ferraris JBibl., Can., in voc.
Archiep. quoad Pallium, p. 220.

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 353

It is, therefore, as the words of the benediction
express it, the " vinculum caritatis," the sign and
pledge of Catholic unity. It is this dependence upon
One which holds the universal Church together. If
we would see the power of the Pallium to maintain
the order and the unity of the Church below, contrast
Canterbury with the Pallium, with Canterbury without
it. In those days when Lanfranc went to Rome to
receive it from the hands of the Vicar of our Lord,
and St. Anselm walked barefoot to take it from the
altar, and then gave it to be kissed by all who stood
by, in reverence to St. Peter and to his successors — in
those days England was of one heart and of " one
life," because of one Faith, in the unity of the uni-
versal Church of God. I will not stay to draw out
the havoc of internal division and unbelief which has
flowed in these three hundred years since the heresy
and the schism which spoiled the See of Canterbury
of the Pallium, and, with it, of the influx of the light
and the jurisdiction of the Apostolic See ; nor to con-
trast the titled and endowed Hierarchy of the Angli-
can Establishment — feeble, vacillating, subservient to
the world, and disunited against itself — with the ma-
jestic unity and firmness of the Episcopate of France.
I do not, in this contrast, imply, what is not the fact,

that a Priesthood and Episcopate really survive in the

23

354 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

Anglican Establishment. The revolt which forfeited
the bond of unity and the vestment of pastoral juris-
diction over souls, dissolved the whole order of the
Catholic Hierarchy. For the Pallium is the protest
and witness against the Erastianism of national pride.
It is the evidence of a Sovereignty not of man or by
man, which transcends all civil powers, and claims
obedience from them all. They who bear it are the
foremost in the conflict; witness at this moment
Turin, and Milan, and Cagliari, and many more
beside.

Finally, it is by the influence of its supreme juris-
diction that the Holy See is present, and makes itself
felt as a principle of order and of unity, throughout
the whole Church on Earth ; and every Patriarch,
Primate, Metropolitan, and Archbishop becomes the
witness and the evidence of its presence and power.
Therefore the Pallium is said to be " perfectae cum
Apostolica Sede unionis tessera," the pledge of perfect
union with the Apostolic See. And in this we see
the perfect fulfilment of St. Ambrose's words, " Ubi
Petrus, ibi Ecclesia"*— " where Peter is, the Church
is ;" and of St. Leo's, " that Peter may rule over the
flock, as his own sheep, over which Christ rules in

* Sti. Ambrosii Opera* torn, i, p. 879.

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 355

chief;"* and again, " as that which Peter believed in
Christ is perpetual, so that which Christ instituted in
Peter may never cease."f

The act, then, of to-day is no mere ceremonial of
an ancient usage, but a living and energetic reality in
the government and action of the Church. The Car-
dinal Archbishop of Westminster, bearing himself
the Pall of St. Augustine, in the name of the Vicar
of Christ, invests the Archbishop of a distant Church
with this symbol of the greater jurisdiction. It
makes him to be a Pastor of pastors, with a power
of rule even within the Episcopate.

It is not for me, Most Reverend Father, to remind
you of the admonitions of that investiture. The words
of the Sovereign Pontiff have been, by anticipation,
spoken over you: " Quicunque Te largiente ea gesta-
verit intelligat se ovium Tuarum pastorem, atque in
opere exhibeat quod signatur in nomine."- — " Who-
soever, by Thy grace, shall bear this pall, let him know
himself to be a shepherd of Thy sheep, and in works
show himself what is expressed in the name." It is
to you the symbol of unity, of authority, of power, of

* " Oranes tamen proprie regat Petrus, quos principaliter regit
Christus." — S. Leon., Serm. iii. In ami. die Assurap.

t Sicut permanet quod in Christo Petrus credidit, ita permanet
quod in Petro Christus instituit." — S. Leon., Serm. ii. In. die
Assurap.

356 THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

the love of souls, of generosity for Christ's sake. It
admonishes you to be " the imitator of the good and
great Shepherd, who laid the lost sheep upon His
shoulders, and brought it back to the flock, for which
He laid down His life." It bids you, " after His
example, to be watchful in the custody of the Flock,
to be vigilant and circumspect, lest any fall into the
jaws of the wolf; to be strict in discipline, seeking
out that which is lost, bringing back that which is
astray, binding up that which is wounded, and
guarding that which is sound." It admonishes you
to be " crucified to the world," and to hasten in the
way of God's commandments, before all others, as a
light and example of holy obedience. Such are not
my words, but the words of the Vicar of Jesus Christ
standing over the tomb of the Apostle, and praying,
" ut fiat in te duplex spiritus," that a double portion
of the apostolic spirit may rest upon you : of which
this Pall shall be your pledge.

It will be with you in life, in every hour of need.
Virtue will go out from it for every conflict. And
conflict will be round about it, wheresoever you may
go, for where the shadow of Rome falls, the world
rises against it. The will of the flesh and the will of
man are unchangeably opposed to the will of the
Vicar of Jesus Christ; and you bear the token of

THE MANTLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 357

the vesture that was dyed in blood: the prophecy of
suffering and the gage of victory.

It will be with you also in death,* laid with you in
the grave, when the toils and pains of life are over,
and you shall taste of the first rest which henceforth
remains to you — the first rest, and also the last — in
the day when the Good Shepherd of the sheep shall
appear, and this vesture shall be exchanged for the
stole of immortality, before the throne of His glory.

* We little thought then how soon this would be realized. In
less than a year and a-half the Pastor and the Pallium were laid in
the grave, with the love and lamentations of his flock, to whom
even his short episcopate had greatly endeared him.

XI.

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD
TO COME.

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF ST. ROCH, PARIS.

1861.

TO

HIS EMINENCE FRANCIS NICHOLAS MADELEINE CARDINAL MORLOT,

AKCHBISHOP OF PARIS,
GRAND ALMONEB OF FRANCE, ETC., ETC.,

THIS SEBMON IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

THE

POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

" Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are
above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God."— Co/os-
stems, iii, 1.

THE Resurrection of the Son of God was the accom-
plishment of His work and the perfection of His
Person. It was the accomplishment of His work,
because it completed His victory over sin and death,
and fulfilled the words of the Prophet: " O death, I
will be thy death."* It was the perfection of His
Person, because in Him first of all our mortality put
on immortality, and our manhood was invested with
the essential and accidental glory of the kingdom of
God. But during these last days the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ has been the subject of your continual
thoughts. I have no need, therefore, to speak of its
history nor of its theology: I would rather to-day

* Oaee, xiii, 14.

362 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

draw out some of its consequences and powers upon
ourselves.

The resurrection is neither a sterile fact in the past,
nor only an event to come, but a living and active
power in the present, penetrating the very substance
of our life and being. The resurrection of Jesus
already quickens the world. St. Paul uses no rheto-
rical hyperbole when he says to the Romans: Conse-
pulti enim sumus cum illo — " We are buried together
with Him by baptism into death, that as Christ is
risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we
also may walk in newness of life."* Nor when he
tells the Christians of Colosse that they were " already
risen with Christ."f Nor when He says to the He-
brews that they had tasted virtutes futuri sceculi — "the
powers of the world to come."J Nor Jesus, when He
said, "I am the resurrection and the life;" not "I will
be," but " I am" now in this present time. This, then, is
the supernatural fact of our state on which I desire to
dwell. I would show that the resurrection is already
at work upon us, that we are the "primitice" the
first fruits, or the preludes of the Kingdom of God.
We have in us a present participation and an incipient
conformity to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We

* Rom., vi, 4. t Coloss., Hi, 1 .

J Hebrews, vi, 5.

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 363

share it, and it works in us, both in individuals and
in the Church.

First, then, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the
power by which we rise again from eternal death ; and
this resurrection is already accomplished. We were
by nature born in sin and dead before God. The
whole world was dead, when Jesus died, and rose
again, and instituted the Sacrament of Regeneration,
in which, by the spiritual resurrection, we were raised
from the dead to a new and supernatural life. In our
regeneration we pass from the power of eternal death.
We receive the infusion of a new life from God.
We were dead, we are risen again. The resurrection
has wrought its first work upon us. Jesus risen lives
in us, and one by one we rise and live by Him.

But more than this, the powers of the resurrection
are inexhaustible. If, after our spiritual resurrection,
we sin mortally and die once more, there is again and
again the same power to raise the soul to life. The
Sacrament of Penance recalls the soul which has died
again, to all the amplitude of its vitality, and this
power of the resurrection never fails. As even to the
end of life there is fear of spiritual death, so also in
the Sacrament of Penance there is the gift of a perpe-
tual revival. Life prevails over death, and the exube-
rant vitality which descends from Jesus risen, over-

364 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

passes the powers of sin and death. If, after a long
life of faith, the just man sins mortally against God,
he dies; after long years of faith, obedience, and
prayer, after all his good works of charity, self-denial,
and mortification, one mortal sin, and all is extinct.
Just as a tree laden with autumn fruits, if some un-
timely lightning strike it, will dry up, leaf, branch,
and root, the fruits hang withered on the bough, dead
fruits upon a dead tree : so the works of the just. He
was as the tree planted by the rivers of water, full of
foliage, and bending under its abundance of fruit. In
a moment all is dead. Yet even for this there is a
revival. The resurrection of Jesus, working penance,
fills the root again with a new vitality, the tree lives
once more, the leaf is soft with a new moisture, and
the fruits revive with their former ripeness. All was
dead — all is alive again: for the resurrection of Jesus
has reentered in the fulness of its life and power.
Such is the action of the resurrection upon us even
now. By it we live our only true life, the life of
grace, the eternal life which is hid with Christ in God.
" Blessed and holy is he who hath part in the first re-
surrection, on him the second death hath no power."*
Our Divine Lord said to His disciples : " You who
have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son
Apoc., xx, 6.

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 365

of Man shall sit upon the seat of His majesty, you also
shall sit on twelve seats."* He taught them that the
resurrection should accomplish what His grace had
already begun ; that the resurrection is the regenera-
tion completed, as the regeneration is the resurrection
begun ; that they who are raised from eternal death,
by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, shall be raised
also from temporal death by the power of God. The
Apostle says : " We, who have received the first
fruits of the Spirit, are waiting for the adoption, the
redemption of our body."f The resurrection has
accomplished its greater work in us, it will also
accomplish the less ; for the resurrection of the soul
is greater in power and grace than the resurrection
of the body. As the life of the soul to the life of
the body, so is our baptism to our resurrection.

But there are now, as then, those who ask : " How
do the dead rise again, and with what manner of
body do they come?"J If I should say, I know not,
my certainty of faith would not be less. But the
Apostle has answered for me : " Senseless man, that
which thou sowest is not quickened except it die
first. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not
the body which shall be, but bare grain, as of wheat,

* St. Matth., xix, 28. f Rom., viii, 23.

$ I Cor., xv, 35.

366 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

or of some of the rest. But God giveth it a body as
He will : and to every seed its proper body."*

We are surrounded by the power of resurrection.
The whole world is full of it. All nature lives and
revives by it. I cast a seed into the earth, it springs
into a blade, a stalk, an ear, the full corn in the ear.
How, I know not ; but it is certain, undeniable, self-
evident. There is a line of connection, a causality,
call it what you will, and let the philosophers of Posi-
tive Science say what they may, which links the seed
to the blade, and the blade to the grain in the ear.
It is of the same substance, it springs from the same
principle of vitality, it is the offspring of the seed
which was sown, it is the seed itself and the harvest
is its proper resurrection. So with the body, which
we lay not in burial-grounds, but in our " sleeping-
places ;" for Jesus has changed death to sleep, and
our cemeteries are places of a rest which stands re-
lated to the resurrection as our sleep to waking.

The very same body shall rise again, the same in
substance, but not in infirmity. It will rise in its per-
fection. It was sown in dishonour, it is raised in
glory; it was sown a natural body, it is raised a spiri-
tual body, rectified in all its powers and restored to all
its symmetry, as God in the beginning created man in
* I Cor., xv, 36, 37, 38.

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 367

His own image, and made our humanity the expres-
sion of His own likeness. There shall be no infirmity
or deformity in the resurrection of the just. In this
world we are halt and maimed, our eyes are glazed
with dimness, and our ears are dull of hearing ; even
our intelligence wears out or is straitened by the nar-
rowness of its instrument, or deadened by the decay
of its material power. But in that day there shall be
no more disease nor deformity, no insanity of the
mind or idiocy of the reason. All the clouds shall
be rolled away, and the spirits of the just made per-
fect shall be clothed in a body in proportion and
harmony with their perfection.

And more than this, even the body shall likewise
have its glory. The prerogatives of the soul shall
overflow upon it, and clothe it with supernatural
splendour and endowments. It shall be impassible
and immortal, subtle as the light, and glorious as the
sun in his strength. For Jesus shall change the body
of our humiliation to be like to the body of His glory.
Even now already the principle of this immortality is
in our mortal body, by the substance of the Body
and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist,
which is the link between the Incarnation of God
and the resurrection of the members of His mvstical
body from the dead.

363 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

And with this there is given to us another confor-
mity to the resurrection of Jesus, in the perfect per-
sonal identity of all who rise again. " Videte manus
meas et pedes, quia ego Ipse sum" — " See my hands
and my feet, that it is I myself."* Not a spirit nor a'
phantom, nor in another form created in the stead of
that which was, but the same Jesus who ate and drank,
was weary and wept with you, your Lord, your Bro-
ther, your Kinsman, and your Friend. So, too, shall
it be with us in all the fulness of our personal con-
sciousness, which links our manhood to our childhood,
and identifies what we are with what we were. What
is this mystery of personal identity, but the living and
lineal sense and intuition, the knowledge of the heart,
and the consciousness of the intelligence that we are
the same who once were children by our father's side
and knelt at our mother's knee — who wept and re-
joiced with griefs and joys which seem to us now to
be a mere imitation of life and its reality. We rest
upon our past as the tree rests upon its root. We
spring from it, and derive our life and strength, our
intellectual powers and the affections of our hearts,
from that personal and continuous life, as the tree
unfolds itself into stature and symmetry, and into leaf
and fruit, by the expansion of its one continuous life,
* St. Luke, xxiv, 39.

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 369

matured by the sun and air. And this consciousness
will be to all eternity the same: and in it will be sus-
pended all that we call our character, all that we have
received by nature or by grace, all that we have
acquired by a life of intellectual and moral action, all
that has been impressed on us from without, by bless-
ings and by chastisements, by joys and by wounds, as
the stigmata were still retained by Jesus, in hands,
feet, and side, as the tokens of His identity. " It is I
myself." Still more than this, because of this personal
identity, we shall have the same relation to times, and
to places, and to each other. Jesus and Mary will to
all eternity be Son and Mother ; and this one divine
fact reveals to us the eternity of our relations.
Andrew and Peter, James and John will be brothers,
Martha and Mary sisters for ever. Our relations
are a part of our consciousness: we could not put
them off without spoiling ourselves of the greater
part of our personal identity.

And from this arises another grace of the resurrec-
tion of Jesus. The home we have loved and lost shall
be found once more, the same as it was before, save
only that it shall be changeless and eternal. u We
will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them
that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as

others who have no hope. For if we believe that

24

370 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

Jesus died and rose again, even so them who have
slept through Jesus will God bring with Him."* Our
perfect personal identity will bring with it a perfect
mutual recognition, and this perfect recognition will
renew the personal relations of all that have constituted
our home on earth. All the bonds of kindred will be
there, but transfigured with the charity of the king-
dom of God. The love of father, mother, brother,
sister, parent, child, will then attain its true perfection,
and exist eternally. Home will once more be. Our
father's house, the vision of childhood, again after this
life of change, found again in all its sweetness and
beauty, far beyond even the dream of early joy which
follows us to the end of life. The memory of the
past is but dim and faint, compared to the reality
which is yet to come. From that eternal home none
shall any more go out, and the sweetness and the
beauty shall never pass or change. It shall be immu-
table as the vision of God. Poor world ! for whom,
after this life ended, there is no eternal home. u If in
this life only we had hope in Christ, we should be of
all men most miserable." Your home is past, its roof-
tree is fallen, its walls have crumbled piecemeal, the
fretting leprosy has eaten away its stones, and the
place of your childhood is the home of strangers, and
* I Thess., iv, 12, 13.

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 37 1

knows you no more. If you die out of the love of
God, and out of the grace of the resurrection to eter-
nal life, there is no home for you in eternity: all you
have loved will be either gone into the realms of light
where you cannot be, or into the dark world where
God shall be no more seen. The undying personal
identity and the perfect mutual recognition will be
not home, but anguish, u where the worm dieth not
and the fire is not quenched." But to those who rise
to life eternal will come the renewal of the bonds of
friendship, often more tender, more generous, more
tenacious than the affections of kindred. All the love
based upon the maturity and union of answering
minds, of wills and intelligences grown to an almost
inseparable harmony and unity of operation, shall
then return. But, above all, the bonds of spiritual
kindred and friendship — the love of pastors for their
flocks, and spiritual teachers for their children in
grace — shall then be perfected. The apostles of the
nations shall then recognize their posterity, and
" they who have turned many to justice" shall re-
joice in the glory of their children.

I do not know that the beauty of this glory in the
kingdom of the resurrection was ever more vividly
before my eyes than this morning in the Holy Mass
To-day, as you know better than I, we commemorate

37 2 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

the Translation of St. Vincent of Paul. Around the
silver shrine, where the great apostle of active charity
lay reposing in view, I saw his spiritual sons and
daughters, a twofold crown of glory and of joy,
assembled to celebrate his power in the glory of the
saints. Surely in the kingdom of the resurrection he
will know each one who has sprung from the lineage
of his charity on earth. He will know them by name,
by countenance, by history, and by character, in all
the fulness and detail of their life : and they, too, of
every age and people and tongue, will recognize, with
an intimate personal knowledge and love, their great
Founder and Father in God. For then " we shall
know even as also we are known," not by the narrow
perceptions and partial recognitions of those who have
lived in the same times and inhabited the same dwell-
ing, but with the intuitions of the light of glory and
the comprehension of the vision of God.

But the time warns me to draw to an end. There
yet remains one great glory more, the fulness and the
complement of all. The vision of faith, which is in
the children of the resurrection, leads on to the vision
of God in His glory. The beatific vision already be-
longs in reversion and in right to those who see God
by faith, and the light of faith is the prelude of the
light of glory.

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 373

St. Bernardino of Sienna has distinguished the joys
and rewards of the resurrection into four great gifts of
God. First, the Aurea, or essential glory of the soul,
which consists in the illumination of the intelligence
by the uncreated truth, and the replenishment of the
heart by the union of the Holy Ghost with the spirit
of just men made perfect. Next, the Aureola, or the
lesser and special glory of Martyrs, Doctors, and Vir-
gins, the circlet of light, the visible manifestation of
their singular and invisible perfection. Then comes
the Palma, or the palm branch of victory, borne by
the martyrs who have ascended from their conflict to
the peace and the dominion of the kingdom of God.
And among the martyrs are not only those who have
laid down their lives, but they, too, who have borne
a martyr's will ; and they also who, in the shadows of
a hidden and domestic life, accomplish what St. Ber-
nard calls the " martyria domestica et quotidiana,"
the slow and perpetual sacrifice of self for the love
of Jesus.

Lastly, there conies the Fructus, or the fruit of our
labours, the special and proportionate reward of all
acts done for Jesus Christ. Not a cup of cold water
shall lose its reward; not an intention, howsoever
secret and never accomplished, but shall receive its
overpayment of eternal joy.

374 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

Such is the essential and accidental glory, of which
they who are risen with Christ have the foretaste
and the pledge already in the heart. Such is the
power of the resurrection upon every soul born again
through baptism.

And if such is its influence upon every individual
member of Christ, it has a wider and deeper influence
of grace ; for the collective assembly of those who live
by the influx of the life of Jesus constitutes the soul
of the Church, the anima Ecclesice, as St. Augustine
teaches, in which all the elect of all nations and all
ages are made partakers of the supernatural life of
faith and charity. And this universal life is incorpo-
rated and revealed in a compact and organized body,
which is the visible Church of Jesus Christ, from
whom descends the divine prerogative of life imper-
ishable, indestructible, inexhaustible, diffusive, ever
reviving, the sole fountain of life in a dead world.
The nations of the world were dead, when the divine
command was given: " Going, make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them." They were dead in sin
and in alienation from God, when the life of Jesus
risen from the dead went forth to raise them to a new
and supernatural state.

Hence arose Christendom — the resurrection in a
world whose life was extinct. All the earth lay as

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 375

the Valley of Dry Bones in the prophet's vision.
uFili homines putasne vivent ossa isti? Et dixi,
Domine Deus tu nosti."* And the Spirit of the
Lord, the mighty wind, descended from the guest-
chamber, on the day of Pentecost, and entered into
the dry bones, into all races and languages on the
face of the earth, and they were knit together in
power and symmetry and perfection, and they stood
upon their feet full of life and of energy.

Hence, too, arises the ever-renewing elasticity, the
perpetual reviving of the Church, after its ceaseless
persecutions. For three hundred years, the world in
all its power hurled ten persecutions like mountains
upon its head. For three hundred years, its Pontiffs
rose calm and majestic through the storm. The un-
dying life multiplied, the line of the Vicars of Jesus
still renewed itself. One passed to his rest, and an-
other was found sitting in his seat: again and again,
without breach or delay, the successor of St. Peter
ascended a throne stained with blood. Such is the
history of the Church, always bearing about in the
body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of
Jesus may be manifest in its imperishable vitality. It
is the condition of its existence upon Earth in every
age, not of old only, but always. Our fathers, and we

* Ezechiel, xxxvii, 3.

376 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

also, have seen it in these latter days. For three hun-
dred years the undying life of the Church has been
revealed in England. It has been cut down to the
earth, its very roots seemed to be plucked up, and
yet it lives with a rising and expanding life. Its
Hierarchy was destroyed, its Priesthood scattered or
slain, its altars overthrown, its faithful cut off to a
remnant, driven into hiding-places, or tormented into
apostacy. The Church was all but extinct, a remnant
lingered on, a mere handful, without organization,
or conscious unity, or mutual support.

And now the old life is clothed in a new Hierarchy,
and the order, symmetry, and majesty of the Apostolic
power manifests itself again, and its influences are
diffused throughout the whole of England. It has
again drawn its lines over the land and claimed the
obedience of its people. Those three hundred years
have passed over it as a wind which is no more. It
lives not again, for it never died, but it lives on with
a life not of this world, nor of the will of man, but
of God. .

But there is no need to go so far for an example of
the irresistible revival of the Church. The most
luminous and supernatural manifestation of its im-
perishable vitality is to be seen in France. A more
utter extinction of the Church was perhaps never seen,

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 377

even in the persecution of the first ages, than in the
first great revolution, nor a more ample and majestic
resurrection. At the end of the last century the
ancient and splendid Church of France was smitten at
its four corners as by the wind from the wilderness,
and in a moment ceased to be. A sharp and sudden
storm passed over it, and it was not. Its bishops,
priests, religious, faithful were exiled, or tormented, or
slain. Some fifteen thousand martyrs and confessors
bore witness to the fidelity of France and for the
name of Jesus, a mighty army whose blood and inter-
cessions have prevailed with God. They now have
risen again, and reign in greater majesty than before.
The Church of France is a miracle of supernatural
grace: no human hand has raised or multiplied its
life, and made its latter end greater and more abun-
dant than its beginning. Its Divine Head, risen and
immortal, glorifies Himself in the manifestation of His
power as the Life and Resurrection of the world.

But I have no need to dwell on this to you. Such
things are your familiar thoughts. I am drawn to
them by the subject entrusted to me to-day, which
is, to ask your alms in support of the English Mission
in Paris.

Forgive me if I seem to speak too personally.
Believing that in the large number here before me

378 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

there must be many of many nations, it may perhaps
be permitted to me to give expression to my own
personal convictions.

The two governing laws of our minds are our reli-
gion and our country. In the supernatural order, we
have one dominant and all-controlling character, which
rules, moulds, and disposes all our life, and that is
devotion to the Vicar of Jesus Christ : in the natural
order, the highest and deepest dictate of our hearts is
the love of our country and people. St. Thomas
teaches us that this love of our own is a part of
charity. Forgive me, therefore, if I say, that I shall
die as I was born, to the last drop of my blood an
Englishman : I do not mean by the narrow insular
egotism of national pride, but by the love and fidelity
of a son to my land and people. And for this reason
it is that I have always desired, as the two greatest
benedictions to England, first, its conversion to the
faith, and next, its cordial and friendly alliance with
the great people of France.

The conversion of England is indeed a dream of
hope ; but, like the vision of the valley of Dry Bones,
it may be accomplished. If you ask me : " Can these
dry bones live ?" I can only answer : God knoweth.
With God all things are easy. Though for three
hundred years the cold has bound till the tides of spi-

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 379

ritual life, and the winter has been like iron upon the
ground, yet one drop of the fire which fell on the day
of Pentecost would unbind all and renew the face of
the earth. " Ernittet verbum suum et liquefaciet ea:
flabit spiritus ejus et fluent aquae." The rigours of
our spiritual death would be dissolved, and a new life
would burst forth on every side. But it is no question
of what God can do, but of what is likely to be done.
If I must judge by the signs which are visible, I dare
not speak too sanguinely. Three hundred years of
organised schism and inveterate heresy have so pro-
foundly alienated the intelligence and the will of the
English people, that the conversion of England, as it
is often understood, is a dream indeed. History has
hardly an example of any people so far fallen from the
faith, and so organised in its hostility to the Church of
God, returning again to the unity of Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless, Lombardy and Spain were Arian for
centuries, and returned once more ; and as with them,
so it may be with England. But of this no man can
calculate the probability. We may, however, trace
the present indications, and appreciate the visible ten-
dencies of events. And there are two movements now
in progress the result of which would change the face
of England. On the one side there is a process of
dissolution, ever advancing, steadily, surely, and with-

380 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

out a check. Protestantism is running its natural
career. The Established Religion has lost much, and
is losing every day more and more of its intellectual
and moral hold upon the English people. Its inco-
herences, contradictions, internal repulsions, endless
contentions, are doing their work with an unrelent-
ing certainty. The Reformation is devouring itself,
and all its many forms of contradiction are resolving
themselves into rationalism and simple unbelief. All
forms of fragmentary Christianity around the Church
of God are passing away, like mists before the noon-
day sun ; and the Church alone is arising, expanding,
unfolding its powers and its influences, with a stead-
fast growth and a universal progress. Its Hierarchy
and its Dioceses are completing their organization ; its
Priests and Religious are multiplying beyond all hope.
The influx of the power of the universal Church, like
the sea in a tidal river, is pressing in upon England.
There can be no other end of this twofold operation,
than that, at some time hereafter, perhaps at no distant
day, the Catholic Church in England will stand sole
and alone, as she stands among the nations of the
world, the only witness for Jesus, and the only foun-
tain of eternal life, the living among the dead.

I shall not claim too much, if I say, that such a day
would be a day of benediction for England and for the

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 38 1

world. If the mighty, world-wide empire of Great
Britain were Christian and Catholic in its influence
and action upon the world, with all its irresistible
energy of will, its daring enterprise, and its force of
character, it would, like the Apostle of the Gentiles,
with a special power and mission of God, " preach the
faith which it now impugns." If, however, this may
not be, the next event to desire is the close and
friendly alliance of England with the great Catholic
people of France. Bear with me if I say, that I do
not see the glory of France in its dynasties of a thou-
sand years, nor in its fiery legions, nor in the splen-
dour of its military deeds. All these are great and
noble, but there are greater things than these. The
true glory of France is in her supremacy among the
family of Catholic nations ; in her mission and office
as the guardian of the Church and the light of the
world ; in her heroic office as the champion of the
faith, as the restorer of the Sees of St. Cyprian and St.
Augustine, as the protector of the Christians of Syria,
as the pioneer of the cross among the nations of the
East. It is the Catholic authority of France, not only
geographically in all the world, but morally upon the
whole Catholic society, that constitutes her chief dig-
nity among the nations. She is, and ever has been,
notwithstanding her momentary obscurations, the

382 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

most resplendent light among the Catholic peoples.
To her has been committed the office of sustaining, in
the sphere of the political and material order, the
great laws, principles, and ideas which generated in
the beginning, and still maintain, the constitution of
Christian Europe.

The glories of an empire of conquest are pale beside
the glories of a supremacy in the Catholic society of
the world. It is a little thing to fill the earth with
fleets and armies, to found colonies and reign over
oriental races, compared with the mission of arbiter
and guardian of the earthly fortunes of the Church of
God. To such an office, since the fall of the Roman
empire, France has been called ; a great and noble
destiny, more glorious than all its achievements in the
annals of combat and of victory. No ; France has a
nobler and a grander glory. It is not her chivalry,
but her charity, which makes her truly great. It is
the Church of St. Denis and St. Irenseus, St. Hilary
and St. Martin; the majesty of her Hierarchy; the
multitude of her Priesthood ; the fertility of her Reli-
gious ; the fidelity of her Laity ; the zeal of her Mis-
sionaries, who penetrate the world, and one by one, in
a majestic solitude and with inflexible courage, seek
the crown of martyrdom, as her soldiers on the field of
battle seek the crown of victory. It is a glory to a

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 383

people when her priests are soldiers and her soldiers
are priests — when her pastors know no fear, and her
soldiers are not ashamed to confess their faith. O
great people and Church of France ! — rightly named
the eldest sons and daughters of the Church of God —
in this I see your true glory, and with such a France
I desire my country to be for ever united. At least
you will forgive me if I say that to you is committed
a Mission to the whole world, and that the true great-
ness of France and England is in the supernatural
order, within which alone is true greatness, out of
which is false glory and certain downfall. This is the
alliance I desire and pray to see, not such as is based
upon transient and incoherent social theories, but upon
the unity of the faith and Church of God, the unity of
those days of old when France and England had almost
one speech, and in faith were altogether of one heart.

But the England of to-day is not Catholic England.
It has faltered and fallen in its destiny. On you then
rests a double burden of responsibility. You are debt-
ors to the Church of God, and to the Catholic society
throughout the world. Your fidelity under God is its
strength, your hesitation would be its weakness.

I have then a duty to do to-day : it is to invite you
to contract the alliance of charity, and to seal it by an
act of Christian generosity. I am bid to ask your alms

384 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

for the English Mission in Paris, for the support of a
Pastor to seek out the multitudes who speak the En-
lish tongue in this city.

Now a long residence in Rome has taught me how
much there is to be done for foreigners residing abroad.
For along time almost all, and often alarge number for
ever, know no other language than their own : or at
best they learn the language of the country so imper-
fectly as to render the ministry of the Church, except
for the grace of the Sacraments, even on a death bed,
almost useless. Next, there is always a multitude of
children for whom schools are absolutely necessary.
Again, there are mixed marriages, by means of which
many lose their faith, and their children are brought
up without religion. Further, their is a great number
who abandon the practice of their religion, fall into in-
difference, and perhaps far worse, and hide themselves
from the Pastors of the Church in the secrecy of a
foreign population, lost sheep, who all the more need
the search and vigilant eye of a Pastor, because they
not only wander, but wilfully avoid him. Great as is
the charity, zeal, prudence, and discretion of the
Pastors of the country, none but one of their own race
and speech can with sufficient efficacy search them out.
Moreover, there is need of a visible witness and invi-
tation, a known centre to which, in times of visitation

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 385

and of grace, they may be able at once to come. I
know not how this can be without a Church specially
set apart for the English population in Paris, with
Pastor and schools attached to it. This alone would
be the witness, invitation and centre, speaking by its
own presence, and attracting by its perpetual influence.
For this I ask your alms to-day, and not to-day only,
but hereafter, by a steady, organized, and persevering
effort, until the work is done. But I said that I would
invite you to an alliance, and an alliance demands a
reciprocity. For which reason, at my own peril, for I
have no commission to do it, and yet not at any peril,
because I know the will and mind of the great Cardinal
Archbishop, by whose side it is my happiness to stand,
I would invite you to-day to join with us in the found-
ing and raising of two Churches, one for the English
population in Paris, and another for the French popu-
lation in London. All the reasons I have given for
this work in Paris apply with a far greater force to
London. Of the English population in Paris only a
minority are Catholics : of the French population in
London, the whole multitude of between twenty and
thirty thousand are the children of Catholic France.
There exists for them nothing but a small and distant
chapel, capable of holding a few hundreds only. It
is far removed from the centres of industry where your

386 THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME.

countrymen are congregated together. Zealous and
excellent as the priests of that chapel are, it is morally
and physically impossible for them to be pastors of
thirty thousand souls, scattered, hidden, and lost in
our vast Protestant population of two million souls.
My own experience in the confessional has taught
me, year by year, what is the loss of souls always
accomplishing itself;, loss of children, who are edu-
cated as Protestants; loss of the young, who grow
up as unbelievers ; loss of the old, who die without
Sacraments. What is this spiritual havoc only they
who sit in the tribunal of Penance can know ; and
even they know only in a little measure : the whole
account of this terrible reckoning can never be known
until the day of judgment.

For this then let us unite to-day. We, on our part
will leave nothing undone to raise a worthy church in
London for this great work of Catholic charity. You
will, I am confident, not be wanting on your part, to
rival and to outstrip us in this labour of love in Paris.
Let this be the rivalry between our nations, to see
which shall show the most love for souls, and do the
most for the kingdom of God.

This is a worthy contest for two great people such
as ours: all beside is of the earth, and will soon be
forgotten. " Mind the things that are above, not the

THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME. 387

things that are upon the earth." In a little while all
the splendour of empire will be gone, as the light of
yesterday, and all the majesty of power and prowess,
and all the pageantry and pride of life, will be in the
dust of death. One only thing will endure, the
Church of Him Who is " the Resurrection and the
Life."*

* St. John, xi, 25.

XII.

THE

WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY OF THE ANGELS,

BAYSWATER, AT THE IMPARTING OF THE PAPAL

BENEDICTION AND INDULGENCE.

1862.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

" And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar
the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, and for the
testimony which they held." — Apoc.> vi, 9.

SUCH was the vision disclosed by the opening of the
fifth of the Seven Seals. An altar was seen in Heaven,
and underneath the altar were the martyrs of Jesus
who had been slain for the Word of God. In this
are revealed to us many mysteries of the Communion
of Saints. It shows us that the martyrs are in the vision
of God, that from the field of their martyrdom they
pass in the apparel of victory to their crown. For
them there is no tarrying, no expiation, no detention
from the fruition of their final bliss. The one heroic
act of dying for Jesus conforms them to Himself. Next,
we see that they are conscious of what passes here.
" How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not
judge and avenge our blood on those that dwell on the
earth." They knew their oppressors to be in pros-
perity and power. They were in prayer crying out to
Him that sat on the throne, pleading with Him, by
His own name, to avenge His own truth which had
been slain in them. And to this their intercession was

392 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

an answer made. " White robes were given to every
one of them." They received an accession of acciden-
tal glory, of consolation, and of rest. Lastly, we see
that God has a perfect unity of design, in which the
passion and the glory of His martyrs has its part and
place. They were told to rest " till their brethren
who should be slain even as they, should be filled up."
That is, that the number foreknown from the founda-
tion of the world of those who should follow the Lamb
that was slain, not only in His life but in His death,
should be accomplished. The purpose of God has its
predestined outline and its perfect splendour; and its
divine manifestation will rise upon the world in the
succession of time, until its orb is full and its manifold
beauty is revealed. All that is passing upon earth
goes to its accomplishment, and the acts and sufferings
of the Church, visible in this world, have their pro-
portion to this end. It fills up that which is wanting
of the sufferings of Christ : and it glorifies God by
its faith and patience.

Such thoughts lead directly to the subject of to-day,
the Canonization of the Martyrs of Japan, in which
the Church in heaven and earth united in a common
act of worship and of thanksgiving. Before, there-
fore, I impart to you the Benediction, with plenary
indulgence, committed to me for you by the Sove-

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 393

reign Pontiff, I will briefly, as I may, explain the
nature of a Canonization, and the especial circum-
stances of that which took place on last Whit-Sunday.

1. A canonization, then, is a judicial sentence of the
Church, declaring a servant of God to be a Saint,
admitted to the Beatific Vision, and ordaining that
the worship of the universal Church be paid to him.

It is a judicial sentence, because it is a decision of
the Church as judge in such a cause. It is given after
long juridical process, in which evidence is taken with
the greatest rigour, and opposed by all possible objec-
tions. It isa judgment on matters purely supernatural,
on which the Church alone can pronounce. "For what
man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a
man that is in him ? So the things also that are of
God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God."*

It is a judgment formed upon evidence, as to the
virtues and miracles of the saint. The stages of the
process are three. First, he is declared venerable, that
is, worthy of the love and veneration of the Church :
next, he is declared blessed, which process is called
beatification : thirdly, he is declared to be a saint be-
fore the throne of God. The sentence of the Church
does not make the servant of God tobe blessed, or saint,
nor does it place him, as objectors foolishly suppose,

* I Cor.,ii, 11.

394 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

before the throne of God. It does not enact anything,
as if the Church were legislating about it. It declares
him to be what God has already made him, and pub-
lishes it to the faithful. The world, which declaims
against the canonization of the saints, canonizes all its
own departed friends. It pronounces them to be in
heaven, to be blessed, to be with God : and that with-
out process, without evidence ; often in spite of all evi-
dence. Nevertheless, it will not allow the Church to
do, in special examples, that which it does indiscrimi-
nately in all instances. So little does the world realize
what it is to attain to the Vision of God; so in-
adequate, superficial, unreal, are its perceptions of the
state of the departed. The Church, which intensely
realizes the laws of the Divine Nature, and is pro-
foundly conscious that "without holiness no man shall
see the Lord," pronounces those only to be blessed, or
to be saints, in whom by evident signs it knows that
an eminent grace of sanctity has been made perfect.
It requires, therefore, first of all, a protracted and
exact proof of the virtues, cardinal and theological,
in a heroic degree, and evidence of miracles as the
countersigns of the divine favour, and of power
before the throne of God.

But in the process of a martyr no proof is required,
either of virtues or of miracles. The fact of dying for

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 395

" the Word of God, and for the testimony which they
held," is enough. To die for Jesus as He died for us,
is the most perfect conformity to Him. " Greater love
no man hath than this, that he lay down his life for his
friends."* It is proof of the perfection of charity, and
charity is the perfection of God and of His saints. We
know of a certainty that such souls are beneath the
altar, in the bosom of God ; and the sentence which
declares them so, is manifestly true and undeniable.

I have said, however, that it is a judicial sentence
of the Church. It has, therefore, no mere forensic or
natural certainty, but also a supernatural. The whole
subject matter is eminently supernatural. The lives,
the actions, and the passions of the saints fall indeed
into the order of history, and are to be tested by the
processes of evidence; but the principles, laws, and
truths, which underlie the historical facts, are of the
supernatural order, and demand a supernatural dis-
cernment. The subject is one of those of which the
Apostle says, " The sensual man perceive th not those
things that are of the Spirit of God: for it is foolish-
ness to him, and he cannot understand : because it is
spiritually examined."!

And as the discernment is supernatural, so the sen-
tence is undoubtedly certain. And the judge by

* St John, xv, 13. f I Cor., ii, 14.

396 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

whom it is pronounced is one that in dogmatic decrees
of faith and morals is infallible, and in the process of
judging and declaring the sanctity and blessings of
her own children, assuredly cannot err.

The effect of such a judicial sentence is, first, to
sanction the invocation of the saint who is canonized
by all the Church, both in private and in public; and,
next, to place him upon its altars as a pattern of imi-
tation and a mediator by way of prayer in the pre-
sence of God.

Such, then, briefly and in general, is the process of
canonization and its effects.

2. I may now relate what this recent canonization
was. It was the declaration that seven-and-twenty
servants of God are before His throne, in the fruition
of His glory, and interceding for our needs.

They consisted of one Confessor and six-and-
twenty Martyrs.

Of the confessor, Michael de Sanctis, 1 need say
no more than that he was a Portuguese by birth, of
the Order of the Redemption of Captives, called
Trinitarians, of singular innocence of life, and early
gathered to his reward.

Of the martyrs, three were of the Society of Jesus,
all natives of Japan. Three-and-twenty were of the
Order of St. Francis. Five were Spaniards ; eighteen

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 397

were natives, three were priests, six were but lately bap-
tized. All the rest were laymen, catechists, teachers,
aud simple Christians. Many were youths. Three
were boys of ten, eleven, and twelve, as we should call
them altar boys, who served the Mass of the Fathers.
Seventeen were of the Third Order of St. Francis.

In the forty years between 1549 and 1589, the
labours of St. Francis Xavier and his successors had
converted great multitudes in the Empire of Japan.
The number of Christians grew to be upwards of two
millions. About the year 1596, the Christians were
warned by many signs of a coming persecution. At
last the order of the Emperor was published, and on
the evening of the Feast of the Immaculate Concep-
tion the Franciscan ConventatMiako was surrounded,
and the Fathers and their companions were made pri-
soners. They were then condemned to be carried
throughout the Empire, and finally crucified at Nan-
gasaki. While they were singing vespers, the soldiers
came upon them, and Peter Baptist, their superior,
took the crucifix, kissed the feet of our Lord, and
placed himself as the good shepherd at the head of his
flock. They went forth in procession, chanting the
end of vespers. One named Matthias was absent.
His name was called, but no answer. A Christian
standing by came forward and gave up himself instead,

398 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

saying: u Here is Matthias:" and he was numbered
among the martyrs. Three native Jesuits were taken
at Osaka, on the evening of the 2nd of January: they
were told that next day their martyrdom would begin.
They spent the whole night in prayer and in praising
God. Next day they were led forth into the public
place of the city, and their left ears were mutilated.
They were then carried in wagons towards Nangasaki.
As they went they sang the praises of God. The
people, seeing among them three little children, were
moved with compassion. A nobleman tried to save
little Louis, saying: " My child, I will deliver you if
you will renounce your baptism." Little Louis an-
swered : " No, but you must become Christian, the
only way to salvation." Next day, they were carried
on horses to Osaka: and on the 9th of January, 1597,
they set out again for Nangasaki, distant more than
a hundred miles, surrounded by guards, and a soldier
bearing the sentence of death on a pole before them.
Their sufferings in that journey were great. On the
morning of the 5th of February they came in sight of
Nangasaki. When the crosses were prepared, they
were carried to a hill between the city and the sea.
The martyrs were led to the place by a great multitude,
among whom were many Christians. Great compas-
sion was shown for all, especially for the three little

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 399

boys, Louis, Thomas, and Anthony. Many efforts
were made to save them by turning them from the
faith, but all were inflexibly repulsed. The parents
of Anthony, with prayers and tears, besought him to
save himself. But he answered them, that he must
serve God rather than his parents. Little Thomas
lovingly kissed his cross. Little Louis asked where
his cross was: ran to it: embraced, and kissed it with
delight. After confession and mutual forgiveness,
one by one they were attached to their crosses with
cords. Father Peter Baptist prayed the executioner
to drive the nail through his hand in likeness to our
Divine Redeemer. When all were lifted up, little
Louis began to sing " Laudate pueri Dominum," and
in a moment two executioners, by the side of each,
drove two javelins crosswise from the side to the
shoulder. The first who died was Philip of Jesus,
and the last was Father Peter Baptist, the head and
chief of this army of martyrs. Such was their con-
flict and their c*rown.

3. What then does this canonization teach us?
Was it a mere solemnity ? a sterile act of ecclesias-
tical pomp, or a mere exercise of authority ! Not so.
It was an enunciation of a multitude of truths and
laws of the supernatural order, most seasonable and
most necessary for these later times.

400 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

First, it declared the supremacy of sanctity in the
midst of a world sunk in sense and sin. It proclaimed
that what makes one man differ from another is not
birth, or wealth, or intellect, or cultivation, or science,
or worldly achievements, but sanctity. " Men judge
by the countenance, but God sees the heart." And as
God sees, the Church judges, and proclaims the judg-
ment of God to the world. Those whom the Church
honours, are they whom the world despises. Even
more : those whom the Church places upon her altars
are often those whom we pass over. Not only does the
Church take no heed of the princes, rulers, conque-
rors, orators, philosophers of the world, but it does
not canonize only apostles, evangelists, bishops, doc-
tors, or great servants of the Church. It occupies
itself with a supernatural love and tenderness aboutits
least and lowliest children, if only the gleam of heroic
sanctity be around them. Children, like little Louis and
Anthony ; poor shepherd girls, like Germain Cousin ;
beggars in the streets, like Benedict Joseph Labre,
are as precious in her sight, as saints of noble blood
or royal state. What it discerns in them is sanctity ;
that is, as St. Peter calls it, the participation of the
Divine nature.* And where this is, God is. And the
Church proclaims His presence and operation to the

* II St. Peter, i, 4.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 401

world, that all men may adore Him who is wonder-
ful in His Saints, and may recognize the supremacy of
justice and of sanctity above all that the world worships.
By canonizing these martyrs the Church testifies in
a special way to the preciousness of faith in these later
times, when faith has grown feeble among men.
These boy martyrs are a rebuke to the worldliness,
venality, and cowardice of thousands. Moreover, every
canonization exhibits in a wonderful relief the great
laws of the divine order which springs from the Incar-
nation. It manifests the supernatural office of the
Church, not only in its discernment, but in its liberty
of action. All human systems are dependent on the
human will. What man makes man may control.
But the Church of God is free, independent, sovereign
in all its office, both in head and members. This then
is a wonderful manifestation of its liberty in the midst
of the secular usurpations of this age. The pastors
and faithful of all countries come together at the will
of their Head. That the Head of the Church is inde-
pendent and sovereign, is known to all ; that the mem-
bers are also independent, has been plausibly disputed.
But we have seen the Bishops of the Church vindicate
their freedom to appear before the Vicar of Jesus
Christ whensoever he shall call them No earthly

power can detain them from his presence when his

26

402 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

•will is known. And in this fact there is a direct and
powerful witness against the Materialism, Erastianism,
and Secularism of the day. Men believe now-a-days
that the civil power is supreme, if not over the soul,
at least over the body ; that, so long as the conscience
isnot forced, the exterior actions of men are subject to
the civil ruler; that he has the ultimate power to de-
cide whether the bishops and faithful of his realm may
correspond or communicate with Rome. This ques-
tion has been solved by a simple fact, namely, the con-
course of some three hundred bishops to the Holy See,
no man letting them, though many would fain do so.
4. It may be asked : If these servants of God were
martyred some two hundred years ago, why was their
canonization delayed till now? I am not ashamed
to answer, that I do not know. " It is not ours to know
the times and the seasons which the Father has put in
His own power."* It is ours to obey the inspiration of
His will. It is His to fix and to determine, and then
to move the agents of His purposes. The cause or in-
tention of what He does is manifest, not at the time,
but afterwards. Nevertheless, we can see a great fitness
in such an event at this moment, in the midst of the
conflict of the world against the Church. It is a won-
derful fact, that in an age sunk in materialism of every
* Acts, i, 7.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 403

kind, from the grossest worldliness to the atheistical
philosophy, governed by erastianism, and debased by
the so-called positive science of secularism, the pastors
and faithful from all lands should travel from far and
wide to Rome to honour a handful of Japanese.
What one idea is brought out by this fact, but the su-
premacy of the supernatural world, of that higher and
universal order on which not only the welfare but the
existence of the Christian world depends ? These mar-
tyrs "were slain for the love of God and the testimony
which they held."* They were witnesses for God
and for His revelation, for Jesus and for His Church :
for its supremacy over all earthly power, for its inde-
pendence and for its authority over men. In the
midst of the schismatical nationalism of these times,
there arose in every nation a body having a higher
consciousness and a world- wide organization. A
higher unity manifested itself as interpenetrating into
all nations and transcending all their powers. King-
dom may rise against kingdom, and nation against
nation ; but when they rise against the Church, they
divide themselves and fall to domestic contentions.
The Church has its own in the heart of their power,
and they cannot make war upon the Church without
wounding and rending themselves. This event has
* Apoc., vi, 9.

404 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

given a warning to national pride, and is a counter-
revolution, descending from a higher level upon the
political movements of the times. It is, moreover, the
only antagonist to the universality of the revolution
which works by secret agencies and wide-spread in-
telligence under the foundations of every government
in Europe. There is but one system adequate to con-
front this movement of anarchy. The only power able
to withstand the revolution in all places is the Catholic
Church in all places, and this great assembly around
the throne of the Supreme Pontiff has made the Ca-
tholics of all countries conscious of their unity, of their
common duty, and of their united strength. Another
effect was to give to the Sovereign Pontiff the moral
force of the Catholic world in his conflict with the
anarchy of Italy. For years he has stood all alone in
his majestic isolation. He has singly withstood the
threats and the violence of the anti-catholic and anti-
christian faction. He has been the butt of all the
enmities of the world. He may say with his Master :
" torcular calcavi solus." The cause of all the
Churches was upon him. And in their behalf he
withstood the adversary. By the great assembly of
the canonization the Catholic world came round about
him, thanking him for the firmness which sustained
their common inheritance, reaffirming all his utter-

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 405

ances, renewing all his declarations, and claiming
a part with him in the patrimony of the Church,
and in the great laws and principles by which the
Christian world has been constituted, ordered, and
preserved.

And this was accomplished by the simplest means.
The will of the Vicar of Jesus Christ was made known
to the Catholic world ; and all nations flowed to it.
The faithful throughout the world recognized that will
as universal and supreme. To know it is to obey. In
the days before Whitsuntide Rome changed its aspect.
The worldly activity and display of the winter and the
spring-time had passed away with the visitors who
streamed out from its gates on every side. The city
resumed its own traditional calm, and its streets, like
the precincts of a holy place, were still almost to silence.
But now the stillness of the summer-time began to be
broken by the arrival of bishops, priests, and religious
of every nation. Rome put on the aspect of an eccle-
siastical city in a season of religious solemnity. Men
were heard conversing in every tongue. The habits
of every people, diverse in colour and form, were seen
mingling together. The universality of the Church
was visible by representation. There were bishops by
hundreds from the four quarters of the world, and from
the islands of the sea, to represent the episcopate.

406 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

Priests by thousands from every country. Every rite
except the Chaldean in the manifold and world-wide
worship of the Church was there. Since the great
Council of Lateran, Rome had never seen such a
confluence of the Catholic world. And the Council
of Lateran, if more numerous, was not so vast in its
representation. At that day the Episcopate of North-
ern and of Southern America, and of the Southern
world, as yet had no existence. The gathering of last
Whit-Sunday exceeded in its grasp upon the world all
the General Councils of the Church. It was less only
than the first and greatest Pentecost, when in the guest-
chamber Peter and the eleven who had the whole
world in charge were assembled. And yet even there,
among the many tongues of the Jewish dispersion, the
languages of the Gentiles, which surrounded the tomb
of the Apostle, were absent. In truth, the first Pen-
tecost was present in the last in all the fulness of its
lights, prerogatives, and powers. The last was to the
first what the noontide is to the morning. All the
dayspring is contained in it, and the first lights are
mingled with its increasing splendour. Peter and the
Apostles were there, surrounded by the principalities
and powers of the kingdom founded in their blood.
Peter in his successor, invested with the keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven, and with the sole universal juris-

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 407

diction over the flock on earth, celebrated that great
Pentecost in the presence of the whole Church,

It is not for me to describe that great day. Others
have the gifts to do it, and have done it. Its majesty
and splendour go beyond words of mine. The Vicar
of Jesus Christ, surrounded by some three hundred
mitred heads, by a multitude of priests, and an inun-
dation of the faithful, offering the Holy Sacrifice of
the Body and Blood of Jesus over the tomb of the
Apostle, on the day and hour of the coming of the
Holy Ghost, is an event in the history of the world
which as yet has never been, nor perhaps again shall
ever be. The flood of prayer and of praise which
rolled through the Basilica of Constantine, when the
Veni Creator and the Te Deum were first intoned by
that mighty host, were as the sound of the mighty wind
coming which filled the whole house in Jerusalem.

But on these things I do not desire and am not
able to dwell. That which arrests my mind in these
events is their intellectual and spiritual power and
effect.

I dare say, I may seem to many to be a dreamer.
Time will show. Nevertheless, what I believe I will
say. I believe, then, that the moral and spiritual effect
of this act of the Sovereign Pontiff is the beginning of
a new order of intellectual convictions and of moral

408 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

influences in the society of the world. For long years
the anti-catholic policy has been in the ascendant.
Nationality, revolution, and material prosperity have
governed the minds and actions of men. The higher
order of Catholic unity and of supernatural life has
been derided, disbelieved, and violated. The Vicar of
Jesus Christ, after years of isolated protest and frequent
warnings, has at last convoked the Church of God, and
forced into the light of the conscience of all men, of
the worldly, the careless, the lukewarm, the deluded,
even of the unbelieving and the adversaries, that a
vaster power than the empires of the world envelopes
them on every side, penetrates their strongest holds
and their most secret councils. Nations may behave
petulantly to the Church of God, and the Church
bear long and be silent ; but when the conflict reaches
its last form and the Christian society of the world is
at stake, the Church rises in its unity of strength, and
the nations fall back from the conflict. I have no
doubt that many have at last awoke to the conscious-
ness that an universal and higher order than any na-
tional policy or interest is no^ assailed, and they are
perceptibly slackening the heat of their politics and
inventing reasons for delay, and for new combina-
tions, which may eliminate the insoluble difficulties of
Rome and the sovereignty of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 409

We may be indeed sure that the enmity of those
who hate the Catholic Church, and believed it to be
in their grasp, will be intensely excited by the calm
manifestation of its moral power and of the sympathy
of the nations with the Sovereign Pontiff. The inde-
pendence and courage which devised and executed
this great demonstration are not to be forgiven, and
the acclamations of the people of Europe, who went
forth and received again their pastors with public ova-
tions, only because they were on their way to or their
return from the presence of the Holy Father, were
sufficiently provoking to insure a great increase of bit-
terness. Nevertheless, thus far, little has been accom-
plished against the Church. The adversaries seemed
to be confused in mind and speech. The facts were
too vast and explicit, too powerful and profound in
their significance and influence upon the public opinion
of the nations, to be derided or despised. Those who
endeavoured to make head, spoke with stammering
lips, and uncertain sense, and abated breath. Still the
time may not be come. We may yet see some new
access of the enmity which has always followed the
Church and the Vicar of Jesus Christ. But the act is
accomplished. From that day of Pentecost a flood of
light has been poured upon the minds of men engaged
in this conflict. It has manifested many truths, the

410 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

liberty of the Episcopate, its unity in itself, its union
with the Holy See, the sympathy of the nations. It
has elicited the public opinion of millions of Catholics
in every country. It has powerfully reinforced that
public opinion by the return of the bishops, priests,
and faithful of all countries with their own people.
When they returned from the presence of the Vicar of
our Lord, they went back with a new commission to
reanimate the spirit of the Catholic Society of Europe,
which was sick unto death. Multitudes, who before
were vacillating and uncertain, have been confirmed
in their fidelity: the strong have become stronger,
the adversaries have been made to doubt. A spirit
of fearlessness has come upon many who once were
timid : and a new life with new energy vibrates

Ot/

through the Church, a prelude of a new period,
perhaps of conflict, certainly of victory.

For, lastly, there is visible in all this a pledge of the
presence and supreme government of a Divine Ruler.
The providence of God knows no theories of noninter-
vention. Even already the unity of the revolutionists
is dissolved. They have turned upon each other,
baffled each other's policies, shed each other's blood.
Those whom God will punish, He first gives over to
their own madness. The Parliament in Turin and
the sanguinary occupation of Naples are enough to

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE. 41 I

foretell the downfall of sacrilege. It is wonderful to
see the counsels of Achitophel confounded, apparently
without any cause. All that was so precipitate a
little while ago is now at a dead lock. The prosperity
of wrong has withered before the supremacy of justice.
And the event of last Pentecost is among the chief of
the agencies which have paralysed and baffled the
world. From how small a beginning the greatest
events arise. It was to declare the bliss of a few poor
servants of Jesus Christ, simple children of Japan,
unknown by name, martyred some two hundred years
ago, lost to memory among the multitude of the saints
of God. How little they thought that day, when they
hung upon their crosses outside the city gate, with
their faces radiant in death, turned, like the sacred
countenance of Jesus, towards the west, that the day
would come when their names should call together
the strength and wisdom and fortitude of the Church
of God, in an hour of vital conflict, around the Vicar
of their Lord ! It was the thought of the Supreme
Pontiff, but his thoughts are inspirations of his
Master. How great is the result even now in its
rudiments and preludes. How great it will be, they
who come after will know. The greatest actions of
the Church were despised at their time, the Councils
of Nice and of Trent, the Martyrdom of St. Thomas,

4 1 2 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.

the sufferings of the Church in France half a century

O »/

ago, but these events have governed the minds of
men, and altered the course of the world.

And in this moment of his great anxiety, and
with the Church and the world resting upon This
shoulders, the Holy Father remembered you. He
sent you by me his Pontifical Benediction, with
plenary indulgence. To you who have sorrowed
with him, and suffered in his sufferings, who pray
for him with all your strength, and gladly offer to
him of your poverty in his greater need, — to you
he bestows in his own words, though by my voice,
the Benediction which I now impart in obedience to
his command.

XIII.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE
DRY BONES.

PREACHED AT THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH OF ST. BONIFACE,
LONDON.

THE

BESUKRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

" Son of Man, dost thou think these bones shall live ? And I
answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest." — Ezechiel, xxxvii, 3.

" I WAS," writes the Prophet, " in the midst of the
captives by the River Chebar: the heavens were
opened, and I saw the vision of God." " And the
hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth
in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the
midst of a plain which was full of bones, and He said
to me, Prophesy concerning these bones, and say to
them: Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord:
Thus saith the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I
will send spirit into you, and you shall live ; and I will
lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to grow on
you, and will cover you with skin : and I will give
you spirit, and you shall live. And as I prophesied
there was a noise, and behold a commotion, and the
bones came together, and each one to its joint. And
I saw: and behold the sinews and the flesh came up
upon them, and the skin was stretched out over them.
And He said to me, Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy,

416 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

O Son of Man, and say to the spirit : Thus saith the
Lord God: Come, spirit from the four winds, and
blow upon these slain, and let them live again : And I
prophesied : and the spirit came into them, and they
lived: and they stood up upon their feet an exceeding
great army. And He said to me : Son of Man, all
these bones are the house of Israel."

Such was the vision of the Prophet ; too mighty and
majestic to be exhausted by the resurrection even of
a nation. In its primary sense it was accomplished
when the children of the captivity, who lay as the
dry bones for multitude by the rivers of Babylon,
were reconstituted once more in Judah and Jerusalem.
The people which had been disintegrated and scat-
tered, and therefore as a nation dead, was once more
raised, reorganized, quickened. The hand of God
replaced them in their inheritance, the walls of
Jerusalem once more arose, and the Temple was
rebuilt in a splendour less indeed than the splendour
of Solomon's, but to be one day more glorious than the
first house by the advent of the Incarnate Word.

And yet this primary fulfilment is altogether inade-
quate to the majesty and vastness of the prophecy. Its
plenary accomplishment shall be in the resurrection of
the dead, when all who have died since Adam shall be
raised from death by the power of the Incarnate Word.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 417

It is a prophecy of the supernatural order which
broods upon the face of this fallen world: of God
and of His operations, of God Incarnate and of the
action of His Divine power of grace : of the resur-
rection of the soul and of the body, and of its life
both now and in eternity.

The final and plenary fulfilment began to be accom-
plished in the preaching of Jesus to Israel. Jerusalem
had, indeed, been restored from captivity and rebuilt
as at the first. The courses of the Priests ministered
in the Temple, and the Prophets prophesied in the
streets : but it was dead before God. As the Prophet
declared, " The prophets prophesied falsehood, and
the priests clapped their hands, and my people loved
such things."* The Holy City was full of sacrilege ;
the Temple was profaned, and the sanctuary had
become a den of thieves. The idolatries of the
heathen had secretly defiled the courts of the Lord's
house; the commandments of God were of no
effect through the traditions of men ; and they who
were reputed to be just were as whited sepulchres.
Jerusalem " had a name to be alive," and was dead."
It had become as the valley of the dry bones, very
many and very dry. To such a people Jesus prophe-
sied, and His words came with power. There was a

* Jeremias, v, 31.

27

418 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

noise and a commotion : the bones came together, each
one to his place, and the mystical body began to knit
itself in one, and the organization of the Church to
be revealed. The disciples, one by one, were drawn
by a supernatural attraction to the presence of their
Lord, and united together in one fellowship : first the
twelve apostles, then the seventy-two disciples ; the
rudiments of the mystical body, organised and com-
pacted together. The words of Jesus were fulfilled:
" As the Father raiseth up the dead and giveth life,
so the Son also giveth life to whom He will."* The
sinews came upon the dry bones, and flesh clothed
them and the skin covered them, but as yet the life
had not entered into them. The Word of God pro-
phesied upon them \vith His recreating power, but
there was yet another work to be accomplished.
" The Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was
not yet glorified."!

But on the day of Pentecost He descended in
the power of His Godhead with a commotion, a
mighty sound, as of a wind coming,' and entered into
the mystical body, and breathed into it the breath of
life. The second Adam arose from the dust of the
earth, living and life-giving. The Divine Head of the
Church knit to Himself His members.:} and the prero-
* St. John, v, 21. f St. John, vii, 39. J Ephes., ir, 16.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 4 1 9

gatives of the Head became the endowments of the
body. It became one with a twofold unity, essential
and intrinsic, visible and external, because Jesus, its
Head, is one and indivisible. It became indefectible,
because Jesus is life eternal. It became infallible,
because Jesus is the eternal truth, and its intelligence
is perpetually illuminated by His intelligence, and its
voice governed by His voice. By this was fulfilled
the promise and the prophecy : " My Spirit that is
in thee, and my word that I have put into thy mouth,
shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the
mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's
seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever."*
The work which He had begun in His own Person
Jesus continued by His Mystical Body, through
which He went and preached to all the nations of
the world. Death reigned all over the earth. The
races and families of men lay scattered and broken as
bones at the mouth of the pit. The unity of man-
kind was fractured, and the structure of his perfection
was dissolved. The supernatural life had gone out of
the soul, and the soul without God was dead. The
corruption of spiritual death had generated for four
thousand years every form of evil which devours the
generations of men. The Holy Ghost, by the Apostle

* Isaias, lix, 21 .

420 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

of the Gentiles, has drawn the sin and death of the
world as the eye of God alone could see it, and the
word of God could describe it: " Being filled with all
iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness;
full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity,
whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious,
proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient
to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, ,with-
out fidelity, without mercy."*

To such a world Jesus went forth in the person of
His Apostles. " Going, therefore, teach ye all nations :
— and behold I am with you all days even to the
consummation of the world."f It was as the water
which the Prophet Ezechiel saw in vision, coming out
of the sanctuary of God. At firstathread of water, then
a shallow to the ankles, then to the knees, afterwards to
the middle, and then for depth a river to swim in : and
wheresoever the waters went all things had life.J So
the Word and the Spirit upon the dry bones of the
heathen world shed a divine power, and, as they pro-
phesied, there was a commotion and a noise. The
paganism and the philosophies of the world were swept
away as the dust of death, and the souls of men, as the
bones of the grave, began to stir with a new life, and

* Rom., i, 29, 30, 31. t St. Matth., xxviii, 19, 20.

J Ezech., xlvii, 3, 4, 5.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 42)

to knit themselves together, and to put on the form and
symmetry of a supernatural perfection. Nations and
races from the sunrise and from the sunset received the
prophecy of life, and were incorporated into the mys-
tical Body of Jesus and received a new life from His
pierced side. Thepower of theresurrectionand of the
world to come fell upon mankind, and there arose the
great army of the living God, which enveloped even
the Empire of the Cassars, forasmuch as it filled both
heaven and earth. u Ye are come," as the apostle told
them, "unto Mount Sion, and to the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem."* Heaven and earth
were laid together, and Jesus took possession of all
power in heaven and earth. The words He spoke to
Nathaniel were fulfilled: "Because I said unto thee,
I saw thee under the fig tree, thou belie vest, greater
things than these thou shalt see. Amen, amen , I say to
you, you shall see the heavens opened, and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of
Man."f As St. Augustine says, how shall the angels
ascend and descend upon the Son of Man ? How shall
He be both in heaven and earth? By His mystical
Body, which is Himself, the Head and members, one in
life, in organization, in presence, and in action: the
supernatural order uniting heaven and earth : and the
* tieb., xii, 22. f St. John, i, 50, 51.

422 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

holy angels encompassing and ministering to Him
and to us, as they who were seen by the Patriarch in
vision, ascending and descending the mystical ladder
which arose from the earth into the presence of God.
Such is the new creation of God which we celebrate
to-day. St. Michael is the captain of the armies in
heaven, who, with the great army of the Church on
earth, goes forth in the power of the resurrection,
triumphant over sin and death, conquering and to
conquer.

The Apostle tells the Hebrews that they had been
made partakers of the " powers of the world to come"
— that is, that the power of the resurrection was
already upon them, that Jesus had raised them from
the dead : that by their regeneration they had ^passed
from death to life." And this reviving and life-giving
virtue has gone forth from Him through His Mystical
Body and from the person of His Vicar in every age.
The whole history of Christendom is a prolonged ful-
filment of the vision of the dry bones : new races knit
together into the unity of the Mystical Body and
quickened by supernatural life, old races revived and
raised to life again. The source of these divine opera-
tions is the line of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Vicars of
the Incarnate Word. On a theme so well known, and
on a day like this, I should do ill to dwell. It is

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 423

enough to remind you that Britain was once as deeply
buried in spiritual death as Central Africa is now.
Our forefathers offered human sacrifices and sold their
offspring into slavery, when from the side of St. Eleu-
therius an evangelist came to breathe the breath of
life into the dead. Britain arose with a mighty resur-
rection and stood upon its feet, full of the life of
the Church of God from the four winds of heaven.
It is a dim period of Christian history, veiled afar off
in the distance, but the records of the Church attest
the presence of the British Hierarchy in its great
councils, and its union with the Holy See.

Then came a profound mystery of the divine will.
A people from over the sea fell upon Christian Britain
and crushed it to the dust: slew its priesthood, over-
threw its altars, and extinguished all but the name of
Christian. The whole land became once more as the
plain of the dry bones, very many and very dry. The
vision of the prophet was rolled backward. Death
reigned again over the woods and wilds of Britain.

It was at such a time that the spirit of prophecy once
more went forth from the Son of God ; and from the
side of His Vicar there was seen to go forth a proces-
sion of disciples led by an evangelist bearing the word
of life. From the presence of Gregory, first and
greatest of the name, Augustine went forth. He came

424 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

as the living among the dead. On the shores of Kent,
with the cross of redemption and the symbols of our
Lord's passion borne before him, he preached to the dry
bones : and, as he prophesied, there was again a com-
motion and a noise : and the bones came together to
their place, and thebeautiful organization of the Mysti-
cal Body was again compacted, and sinews, and flesh,
and skin came upon it as at the first, and the spirit from
the four winds, the life of the universal Church, en-
tered in, and our Saxon fathers stood upon their feet,
a great army of disciples, confessors, saints, and mar-
tyrs, living before the throne of God. It would detain
us too long to delineate the vast and divine resurrec-
tion by which the whole face of Saxon England lived
and moved once more with supernatural life, and was
knit in all its members and articulations with the
symmetry and unity of the Church of Jesus Christ.
All this I must pass by, for another example urges
itself upon our thoughts to-day.

The Saxons of Britain had risen to the life of God,
while the Saxons of their fatherland were still in the
shadow of the valley of death, scattered as bones in the
mouth of the grave. They were mighty in power ;
they had overflooded the plains and the forests of
Germany. All that was eastward of the Rhine was
heathen : again and again they had passed its stream

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 425

and ravaged the Christianity of Gaul. Again and
again they had met the Christian chivalry of France
in the shock of war with a terrible power and success.
It was the last great onslaught of paganism upon the
name of Jesus ; the last throes of death in the grasp of
life. Again and again Charlemagne overthrew their
hosts, which streamed westward like nations in arms.
He could beat them down and crush them with his
mace of iron, but he could not raise them from death
to life: he could drive them from field to field, from
forest to forest, from fastness to fastness, but he could
not touch the springs of their will, nor turn their
hearts to the living God. All his power was spent,
and they remained twice dead, crushed in war and
without God in the world. But He who orders all
things surely and sweetly in the secrets of His will,
had prepared one mightier than Charlemagne for this
work of giving life. In the cloisters of Saxon Eng-
land was an unknown monk, to whom God had given
the mission to prophesy to the dry bones of the Saxon
race. From the silence of his cell he had been called
to the presence of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and from
the side of Gregory the Second, Winfrid, or Boniface,
went into the fields of the dead in heathen Germany.
What all the chivalry of Charlemagne could not do,
the word of a solitary monk accomplished. The

426 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

heads which would not bow to the axe of the con-
queror were meekly bowed for the baptism of life. He
came and spoke to them with the accents of their own
mother tongue, and with the love of a kinsman and a
brother, and the heart of the rude nations mel ted before
him, and their weapons fell from their grasp. For a
virtue went forth from him, and the springs of the
will were sweetly and mightily touched. The word
of God had wrought within them, and by the spirit
from the four winds the slain lived again and stood
upon their feet full of the power of God and of the
Lamb. Whithersoever he went, life went before him.
Friesland and Thuringia, Bavaria and Saxony, moved
under the accents of his voice : and a new order arose
in a beautiful symmetry, knit and compacted in the
organization of the Mystical Body. The Spirit of
God breathed life from him, and where his footsteps
were impressed all things lived The love of God
burned in his countenance and in his words, and set
the fields and the forests of Germany on fire with the
love of Jesus. But this theme, sweet and beautiful as
it is, would lead us too far away ; and yet it is a natural
prelude to the thoughts which are now in your minds.
We are met to-day to inaugurate in England a Church
of the German people. It is a domestic festival ; for
England and Germany are but two names for one

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 42?

family of men. The great Saxon race has an indis-
soluble unity. Spread where it may, its type is in-
effaceable; mingled as it maybe with other elements,
that type predominates, and the members of the great
Teutonic family act and react upon each other.
England and Germany are united in their origin,
their history and their destinies. For good and also
for ill they have all things common. They have
given and received in a wonderful interchange of
gifts with a profound reciprocity and with a pro-
found responsibility.

Let me, briefly as I may, and as I needs must, sum
up the balance of the past and mark out the destiny
of the future.

Germany has bestowed upon England its very ex-
istence. We are bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh.
All we have in the natural order, except such partial
and later intermixtures as are tributary to the great
stream of our natural life, we have from our Saxon
fathers, who from the Elbe and the Vistula swept and
peopled the plains of England. All the material of
our national greatness — the natural character of our
race, its calmness, firmness, passive endurance, broad
if tardy intelligence, inflexibility if obstinacy of will,
its fearlessness in danger, its world-wide enterprise,
its greatness in misfortune, its repose in prosperity,

428 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

all these are drawn from the blood which covered the
northern plains of Germany with its teeming life.

And with this individual character, Germany be-
stowed on England its love of home: its domestic
order of parental and of fraternal duty, the law and
life of the family : and with this the germs of our civil
state, and the first tracing of the polity which expresses
the national character and is the offspring of it.

The English race is essentially Anglo-Saxon: in
all the world, under every sky, in all circumstances,
however new, the impress of the Teutonic people is
ineffaceably upon the individual, upon the family,
and upon the political society. To this may be as-
cribed in the natural order the greatness of England.
These qualities of the race, and all that they have
achieved upon every land and sea, are the offspring,
the foliage, and the fruitage, of the parent stock
deep set in the soil of Germany.

But if England is a debtor to Germany in the order
of nature, much more is Germany a debtor to England
in the order of grace. From England it received its
regeneration, and there fore its existence in the Mystical
Body of Jesus Christ. From England it received the
gift of life and the inheritance of the kingdom of God.
England bestowed on Germany its Christianity and
Catholicity, and all that has elevated it to the super-

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 42Q

natural life. Its Hierarchy was built up by English-
men. St. Wilbrord, St. Boniface, St. Winnibald,
St. Willibald, laid its foundations. The sees of
Utrecht and Mentz and Paderborn are the witness of
their apostolate. The first martyrs and saints of Ger-
many were Englishmen. The chief patrons of the
Teutonic race, whose names are upon the cities and
sanctuaries of Germany, are of our blood and speech.
All the wonderful fertility of Catholic Germany is as
the vintage and the harvest sown by the tears and
blood of England. If we have received much from
Germany, we have repaid it again with usury.

There is perhaps no more beautiful page in the
history of Christianity than the period of Saxon
England and Catholic Saxony in the freshness of
their conversion to the faith. The childlike simplicity
and robust manhood of the race were elevated by the
Christian faith and the Catholic unity. Both princes
and people were conspicuous for sanctity and for
fidelity to the Vicar of Christ.

So far the union of these two families of the Saxon
race has been for mutual good. But there is another
account to be reckoned up. They are as indissoluble
also for evil as for good : and their affinity is so close,
that as the one is, so the other will be. The Norman
Conquest sowed the seeds of an arrogant nationalism :

430 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

and the medieval empire of Germany developed the
anti-christianCsesarism, which never ceased to contend
with the Vicars of Jesus Christ. And these two kin-
dred evils grew strong by mutual sympathy, and de-
veloped into the erastianism of the sixteenth century,
the prolific source of the anti-catholic movements,
whichhave troubled and threatened Christendom from
that time to the present hour. England and Germany
were ripe for evil. " By one man sin entered the
world, and death by sin."* Among a multitude of evil-
doers, it may be said that Photius has desolated the
East, and Luther the West. A bad preeminence in
schism and heresy invests them with the sin and the
shame of the two greatest breaches in the unity
of the Church of God, the two widest inundations
of spiritual death. Germany was first in the trans-
gression, but England welcomed the example. The
rebellion of Luther against the divine voice of the
Church of God was eagerly followed by Cranmer and
his fellows. The desolation of the sanctuaries of Ger-
many was followed by the sacrilege of England. We
were apt scholars in profanation, and ready disciples in
unbelief. The soil was rank for the seed which was
cast upon it. And from that hour England and Ger-
many have gone steadily on side by side, in the work

* Romans, v, 12.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 431

of destruction. The proud nationalism, the unbounded
popular egotism of England, has joined with the ra-
tionalism and pantheism of Germany, in its warfare
againstthe Catholic and Christian society of the world.
They have waged a perpetual strife against the whole
supernatural order, against the foundation of the faith
and the organization of the Mystical Body. u Every
spirit which dissolveth Jesus is not of God,"* and since
the foundation of Christian Europe, no powers have de-
veloped a hostility so formal and so unrelenting to the
reign of the Incarnate Word over the nations of the
world. While Lutheranism was unfolding itself into
its legitimate rationalism, Anglicanism generated its
proper infidelity. And the two have united in pro-
ducingtheatheisticphilosophy of Germany, which now
is reacting upon England. It is well known that the
English Freethinkers of the last century pushed still
farther the German unbelief. The chief of the Ger-
man rationalistic philosophers learned English, that he
might read the infidelity of Hume. Such has been
their mutual commerce of evil in the region of belief.
If we would see what is the offspring of England and
Germany in the region of the social and political
order, we may take as example the United States of
America at this moment. There we see the Ano-lo-

* I St. John, iv, 3.

432 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

Saxon race spoiled of the Christian and Catholic
elements which made it supernaturally great. For
material force and energy of will, the world has never
seen anything to surpass it : but for abandonment of
God and of the divine will, no nation has ever ven-
tured so far. The people once so childlike in docility
to the faith and Church of God, has now become by
a bad preeminence the leaven of revolution and of
rationalism in all the nations of the world. The dis-
persion of the Anglo-Saxon race is wider than the
dispersion of Israel. Its imperial sway is wider than
the dominion of any race known to history. If it
were faithful to the grace of its regeneration, it might
be at this hour the evangelist of the world ; but, faithless
as it is to the Church of Jesus Christ, it is the world-
wide antagonist of His Vicar upon earth, and the pre-
lude of the anti-christian power of the latter days.

But of this, time forbids me to say more : and I
must return to the celebration of to-day. It begins
under a happy augury.

It was to-day, some twelve years ago, that the Vicar
of Christ gave back to the scattered members of the
Church in England the perfect symmetry of the
Catholic Hierarchy: to-day Pius the Ninth enthroned
in the See of Westminster a Metropolitan, as of old St.
Gregory enthroned St. Augustine in the See of Canter-

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 433

bury. The Church in England once more arose and
stood upon its feet, organized by the word of God,
and quickened by the spirit from the four winds.
Steadily, surely, irresistibly, it is expanding its pre-
sence, filling up the perfection of its symmetry, and
revealing its supernatural life.

To-day also there is with us, as the representative
of Germany, the prelate of an ancient See, a son of St.
Boniface, to unite with us in a renewed alliance of
catholic love and zeal. He comes surrounded by the
pastors of many churches to join with us in this labour
for the children of our common race in London.

Another pledge, too, of this union must be recorded.
The prelates and pastors of Germany, who met a few
weeks ago in their yearly assembly, instituted a collec-
tion of alms to be devoted to the spiritual help of their
brethren in London and Paris. Let us not be behind-
hand in this labour of charity. As they have been
forward and generous, we must be no less. You will
not be wanting, but I trust prompt and abundant in
your offerings for the completion and maintenance of
this Church, to which the charity and piety of Ger-
many has already largely contributed. And in this
union of alms and of prayer we are obeying the appeal
of St. Boniface, who, when he was in the midst of his

apostolic labours, wrote to all bishops and pastors,

28

434 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

monks and nuns, and to all the faithful in England,
to aid him with their intercessions.

From all this then we may learn two great truths of
the supernatural order ; the one, that the action of man
without God is death, and spreads death upon the
earth ; the other, that the action of man with God is
life, and gives life to man. Man can destroy, but God
alone can raise to life again. In proportion as England
and Germany have put forth their powers without
faith in God and obedience to His Church, they have
spread spiritual death among the nations of the world.
In proportion as they labour in God and with God,
they will restore again the dry bones to life. Of this
St. Boniface is a luminous example. The source of
all his power over men was his sanctity, and the
source of his sanctity was his union with God. From
his earliest childhood he had walked with God. All
his intelligence was illuminated with the light of God,
all his heart was filled and enlarged with the love of
God, all his will was elevated and inspired by the
will of God. He had become a temple and a sanctuary
of the Holy Ghost: and therefore his words breathed
life. The silent example of men possessed by the
Holy Ghost has a power over the souls of men which
nothing can simulate. Itisadivineprerogative by which
they quicken and raise, form and perfect the soul. All

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 435

thingsgive way before them, all antagonists yield them-
selves, all barriers melt away : for the omnipotence of
God is with them and works by them : and nothing is be-
yondtheir strength, forwith God all things are possible.
And with sanctity came another gift which springs
from it — the love of souls. The calm and the sweet-
ness of the cloisters at Exeter and Nutscell could not
bind the soul of Winfrid to the home of his childhood.
There was stirring within him a power from the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, the mightiest and the most unresting
of all the motives which impel the soul of man. God
had implanted in him the love of souls. The vision of
his kinsmen according to the flesh, his Saxon brethren,
lying dead in the wilds and forests of his fatherland,
was always before him. His soul had no rest. God
had shown mercy upon him, and he was their debtor.
The dry bones of his race lay scattered far and wide
in spiritual death. He thirsted to prophesy to them :
to call upon them to rise in the name of the Lord,
and to summon the spirit of life from the four winds
to enter into the Saxon people. This it was which
drove him forth with the intensity of a supernatural
force. All alone he went forth, in a majestic self-
reliance, poised upon God, into the midst of a heathen
land. Life was not dear to him, and death was sweet
for the souls for whom Christ died.

436 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

There was yet a third source of supernatural power
which replenished the soul of St. Boniface — afilial and
loving union with the Holy See. To him the will of
the Vicar of Jesus Christ was the law of his life.
Three times he went to Rome, that is, at every great
epoch and event of his life, to derive from the Vicar
of our Lord the light and power needed for his apos-
tolic mission. It was at his second visit to the tomb of
the apostle, that St. Boniface made a solemn conse-
cration of himself to St. Peter. On the feast of
St. Andrew, in the year A.D. 725, he wrote, and
signed, and with his own hand placed upon the body
that is above the tomb of the Apostle, the following
profession and vow: "In the name of our Lord God
and Saviour Jesus Christ, ... I, Boniface, by
the grace of God, bishop, promise to thee, Blessed
Peter, prince of the apostles, and to thy successor
Blessed Pope Gregory, and to his successors, by the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Undivided Trinity,
and by thy holy body, that I will maintain all fidelity
and purity of the Holy Catholic Faith ; and in the
unity of the same faith, by God's help I will persevere,
in which all the salvation of Christians is contained :
in no way, and by no persuasion, will I consent to any-
thing contrary to the unity of the only universal
Church ; but, as I have said, I will render in all things

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 437

a faithful and pure conformity of obedience to thee,
and to the good of thy Church, to whom, by the
Lord God, the power of binding and loosing was com-
mitted, and to thy successors. And if I shall know of
any bishops who violate the ancient statutes of the
fathers, with them I will hold neither communion nor
commerce, but I will hinder them, if I can ; if not, I
will denounce them to my apostolic Lord. And if,
which God forbid, I in anyway shall attempt anything
contrary to this profession, I shall be guilty in the
eternal judgment, and shall incur the punishment of
Ananias and Sapphira, who dared to defraud thee."*
On such a life the crown of martyrdom descended
as its proper end. This martyr's will which forced
him from the cloisters of Exeter, carried him forth
again from his archiepiscopal throne at Mentz. He
could not rest while souls were yet to be saved. Like
the Good Shepherd, he left his flock in the fold, to find
the sheep that were lost. Though full of years, and
of the glories of an apostolic life, he could not endure
even the peace which closes an aged pastor's life.
He chose his successor, and descended from his
archiepiscopal see, that he might once more go forth
into the plain of the dry bones. God was calling
him to his glory, and to his reward. The time of
his dissolution was near at hand.

* St. Boni/acii Opera, vol. ii, 9.

438 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

It was at Dockum, on the eve of Whit-Sunday, to
which he had a special devotion, that he had prepared
to give confirmation to the newly baptised. A tent
was raised as a sanctuary, and all was prepared for the
sacred offices, when a band of heathens rushed upon
him. He would suffer no hand to be lifted in defence,
but with an inflexible courage and a supernatural joy,
he gave himself as a sacrifice for the souls of his chil-
dren. After his death a volume was found sprinkled
with his blood. It was the book of the Canons of the
Holy Catholic and Roman Church, which he received
from the Vicar of Christ, when on the tomb of the
Apostles he promised the pure fidelity of his heart
and life.

Such, then, are the conditions by which we may
give life to souls dead in sin. By these, and by no
others, can we prevail, — by sanctity, by love of
souls, by union with the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and
by a martyr's will, though we be never called to the
martyr's crown or conflict. .

There remains but one word more. The cele-
bration of to-day is marked by a singular fact, not
borrowed from distant history, but from our own
time and the context of our common life.

Seventy years ago, when this Church was first
built, it was opened as a place of worship for a

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES. 439

dissenting sect, now hardly existing. There was
present then a boy of ten years old, a kinsman of him
who preached that day. The preacher congratulated
Itis hearers that the darkness of Popery was vanish-
ing away before the advancing light of the Gospel.
That boy is again here to-day, a man of eighty years,
and not only here, but of the household of faith.
In the interval of time he has been baptized by the
Holy Ghost, and illuminated with the knowledge of
the Son of God. He has learned to know that what
the world calls Popery is the true faith of the Incar-
nate Word. He is here to-day as a Catholic to
witness a second opening of this Church to be a
sanctuary of the living God.

Within the term of one such life what events are
compressed. One extreme of it rests upon the year
when London was tormented and degraded by the
No Popery riots, when the infuriated populace
streamed through the streets to sack and burn the
Catholic Churches, when the Catholic Bishop was
sought for, as St. Boniface by the heathen, to take
his life ; the other extreme rests upon this day, when
the Church comes forth in all its power and freedom.
In the interval what events are to be found? The
Emancipation and the resurrection of the whole
Catholic people of this Empire as from the grave,

440 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

the abolition of penal laws, and their restoration to
the social and political life of this English race.
Next, the organization of the Catholic Hierarchy,
with all the exuberant life which goes out of it on
every side. Who could then have foreseen such
manifestations of the power from on high? And if
one life has seen such things, what may not some of
you yet live to see? There may be some here
to-day who shall be witnesses of a change, which if
I were to attempt to describe, you would think me
beside myself. There are agencies and powers in
full operation, the effects of which as yet are not
perceived. But two things are already manifest ;
the one, that all fragmenta^ forms of Christianity
are falling piecemeal, and resolving themselves into
dust. The touch of death has been laid upon them,
and they are obeying the law of their own nature.
They spring from man, and, as all human things,
they contain the principles of their own dissolution.
The other, that the Church of God is expanding
with a steadfast and majestic advance, multiplying
itself on every side, and prevailing over the reason
and the hearts of men. The word of God and the
Spirit from the ends of the world have entered into
England with all the weight and power of an irre-
sistible tide. It is like the encroachments of the

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DRY BONES.

sea. And as all antagonists dissolve and pass away,
leaving the earth strewn with fragments of their
lifeless forms, the Church of God stands alone, the
living and life-giving among the dead. When and
how these things shall be, we know not, but I also
may say, in the words of our Divine Redeemer:
" There be some standing here who shall not taste
death till they see the kingdom of God coming in

power."*

St. Murk, viii. 39.

INDEX.

Achitophel, his supposed counsel in regard to Ireland, 252 ; his

counsels confounded, 411.
Agnes, St., her festival in Rome, 343 ; ceremony of blessing two

lambs in her church, 344.
Alacoque, B, Margaret Mary, 160.
Alphonsus, St., 298.
Ambrose, St., 354.
Anglicanism, its nature and tendencies, 47, 48, 431 ; incoherence

of, 8; parent of sects, 57.
Anselm, St., 160, 353.
Apostles, the mission of, 229,292; equal except in jurisdiction,

352; Peter the Head of, 348-9.

Archbishop, title and jurisdiction of, how obtained, 350.
Arianism, its spread, 26.

Arnold, Dr., head of the modern rationalistic school in England, 49.
Atheism, advance of, 25.

Augustine, St., Bishop of Hippo, 1 18, 233, 238, 240, 374.
Augustine, St., Apostle of England, 215, 423.
Avitus, St., 351.

Bede, St., 120.

Benedict, St., 227, 288, 298, 302.

Benedictines, Order of, its spread, 302 ; its Saints and Popes, 303,

its history in England, 291.
Bernard, St., 135, 160, 233.
Bernardine of Sienna, St., 160, 373.
Bonaventure, St., 126, 143, 160.

444 INDEX.

Boniface, St., Apostle of Germany, his mission, 425; accomplished
more than Charlemagne, 426; his sanctity, 434, his love of souls,
435; his devotion to the Holy See, 436; his vow, 436; his
martyrdom, 438.

Calvinism, in the Anglican Establishment, 43.

Camillus, St., 298.

Canonization of Saints, nature of, 393; a judicial sentence, 393;
evidence for, 393; three stages of, 393; belongs to the super-
natural order, 395 ; declares the supremacy of sanctity, 400 ; the
preciousness of faith and the liberty of the Church, 401.

Canonization of the Martyrs of Japan, 396, 407 ; may begin a ne\v
order of things, 407.

Catholic, see Church.

Catholics in England, their endurance, 102, 107 ; their emanci-
pation, 47, 439; their influence, 71.

Certainty, Divine, necessity of, 3 ; formal cause of, 17-

Charles Borromeo, St., born 1538, entered active life, 1563, died
1585, 315; greatness of his mission, 315; his direction of the
Council of Trent, 316 ; his minuteness and industry, 318; insti-
tutions founded by, 319; his Confraternity of Christian Doctrine,
320 ; his Congregation of Oblates, 321 ; his influence on the Laity,
322 ; his defence of tho liberties of the Church, 323 ; his conduct
during the plague of Milan, 325 ; his sweetness, 326 ; compassion,
327; tenderness, 327; universal charity, 306 ; his prayer, 329;
devotion to the Passion, 330 ; his last illness and death, 331, 332;
a pattern to the Clergy, 334 ; to the Laity, 335-6 ; summary of
his character, 337.

Christendom, three periods in its history, 32 ; its life from God,
374 ; history of, 422.

Christianity, Ancient, misrepresentation of, 177 ; vicissitudes of in
England, 27.

Church, the, typified in the Old Law, 15 ; the Mystical Body of
Christ, 150, 419; its soul, 374; illuminated by the Holy Ghost,
11, 14, 118, 207, 230; organ of the Holy Ghost, 12, 16, 19, 21,

INDEX. 445

137, 241 ; office of the Holy Ghost in, 12, 13, 20, 231-237 ; Holy
Ghost the life of, 243; its unity, 22, 94, 118; its unity in
diversity, 297; its sanctity, 400; its universality, 97 •• its apos-
tolicity, 118; its visibility, 4, 21, 241 ; its infallibility, 231 ; active
and passive, 130, 292; its indefectibility, 20, 119, 222, 374: its
incorruptibility, 56, 95, 99; its discernment supernatural, 6, 395;
not on probation, but the instrument of probation, 21, 239, 242 ;
mystical earthen vessel, 241; the house of wisdom, 150; its
Divine order denied by English policy, 66.

Church, Catholic, the, its testimony, 109; changeless in faith, 120;
the guarantee of Divine tradition, 3 ; its denning power, 122,
133; in perpetual conflict, 98, 101, 144, 178, 182, 403; sovereignty
of, 156, 272, 280 ; its hierarchy, 294 ; its imperishable vitality,
375; its liberty of action, 401-2; its strength in weakness, 228;
its present spread, 219; city on a mountain, 241 ; its multiform
action, 304 ; does nothing in vain, 346 ; vigilant care of, in its
usages, 345 ; its supernatural charity, 293 ; its fruitfulness, 96,
294 ; unites together secular and religious, 291 , 305 : pervaded
by the love of Jesus Christ, 91, 158; the author's reasons for
submitting to, 3, 7-

Church, Catholic, in England, idea of, partly effaced, 38, 40, 65 ;
and difficult to restore, 58; hostility to, greater than in America,
41, 42; its restoration, 108, 111, 142, 145,' 287, 376; its future,
75,78,81, 112, 168, 379,440.

Civilization, Christian, the offspring of faith, 31 ; Anti-Catholic,
essentially natural, 32.

Colenso, Dr., his book on the Pentateuch essentially rationalistic,
55 ; shows the impotency of the Anglican Church, 142.

"Consensus Sanctorum omnium sensus Spiritus Sancti est," 6.

Conversions in England to the Catholic Church, from every class,
68, 77, 81.

Councils, in England, 119; of Africa, 153; seven of Milan, 167.

Council, of Aries, 57; of Basle, 129; third of Constantinople, 128;
of Ephesus, 122, 128, 151 ; of Florence, 151, 153; of Frankfort,
129; ofLateran, 151, 153; of Milan, 167, 317; first of Nice,

446

INDEX.

151; second of Nice, 128; of Orange, 153; of Sardica, 27; of
Toledo, 129, 153, 167; of Trent, 152; of Vienne, 153; of West-
minster, 168.

Cousin, Germain, the blessed, 400.

Cyprian, St., 26, 177, 264, 348.

•

De Maistre, 78.
De Tocqueville, 30.
Divine certainty, 3 ; commission, 2.
Dogma of faith, a revelation of the mind of God, 135, 137; its

power, 136; the basis of theology, 295.
Dominic, St., 227, 298.
Donatism, 26.

Edmund, St., of Canterbury, 30.

Edward, St., the Confessor, 29.

England, its first conversion, 216; Saxon, its Catholic unity, 28,
217 ; once of one life and faith, 353 ; a debtor to Germany in the
order of nature, 428 ; to Ireland in the order of grace, 26 ; Nor-
man, its nationality, 29, 218 ; changes in the religious history of,
27, 43-49 ; its faith lost, 218 ; its people innocent of the " Refor-
mation," 276; its master heresy, 56; wasted by perpetual internal
schisms, 36, 141 ; relations of its different classes to the Catholic
Church, 67-77 ; its common people in good faith, 79, 1 92 j its
four collisions with the Holy See, 59, 140; importance of the last
thirty years of its religious history, 61 ; its great influence, 112,
167, 381 ; may assist the Church like ancient Rome, 113 ; isola-
tion of, 35, 79, 64 ; on an inclined plane, 25 ; essentially latitudi-
narian and anti-sacramental, 45 ; departing further from Chris-
tianity, 59, 62,67, 71, 81, 380; like Pagan Rome, "sentina
gentium," 140; like Babylon, 193; the head of Protestantism;
167; Hs policy destructive to Christian society, 63, 65, 80, 282;
five signs of future evil in, 141 ; last and greatest danger of, 80;
two greatest blessings to, 378 ; means of its conversion to the
faith, 68, 74, 82 ; love and fidelity of the author to, 378.

INDEX. 447

Episcopacy, Anglican opinions on, 39, 40.

Episcopate of France, its unity and firmness, 353.

Establishment, Anglican, its two tendencies, 45; essentially ra-
tionalistic, 54 ; its minor heresies, 55; its helplessness, 58; its
inefficiency, 104, 141, 330; contrasted with the Catholic Church,
56.

" Essays and Reviews," summary of their principles, 49-51 ; judg-
ment of the Court of Arches upon, 52.

Faith, its rarity, 201 ; its grounds, 5 ; hindrances to, 112; above the
senses and reason, 205 ; attestations to, 204, 209, 211 ; its expan-
sion, 136; always the same in substance, 120; kingdom of, its
three Divine gifts, 203 ; the Author's progress towards, 2, 3, 5 ;
its blessedness, 200, 211 ; prelude to the Beatific Vision, 372.

France, Episcopate of, 353 ; Catholic Church restored to, 377 ; her
true glory, — what, 381 ; her missionaries, 382.

Francis, St., of Assisi, 298.

Francis, St., Xavier, 160.

Francis, St., of Sales, 397-

Franciscans, Order of, 397.

Germany, gave Saxon England its existence, 427-8; converted to

Christianity by St. Boniface, 425 ; a debtor to England in the

the order of grace, 428.

God, loves simplicity and sincerity, 213; always gives grace, 214.
Gregory I, St., won England to the Faith, 76, 214; his work still

exists, 219; state of Europe at his death, 274; quoted on the

See of Rome, 351.
Gregory, St., of Nazianzum, 233.

Henry VIII., type of the Norman period of England, 30,. 218.
Hierarchy, the Catholic; principle of its harmony, —what, 351 ; its

gradations, 351 ; the condition of the action of the Church, 294 ;

restored to England, 111, 221.

448 INDEX.

Hierarchy, the Anglican, feeble, vacillating, and subservient to the
world, 353.

Hoadly, 45.

Holy Ghost, His titles, 233; His personal Advent at Pentecost, 10,
234 ; illuminated individuals in the Old Law, but the Church in
the New, 11, 14, 118, 207, 230; the Church His organ, 12, 16,
19, 21, 137, 241 ; reveals the mind of God, 118, 131, 133; His
testimony to the intellect, 209; in the heart, 210; in the Church,
241 ; source of life, 243 ; of infallibility, 231 ; of fruitfulness,
231; of unity, 22, 118.

Holy Ghost, office of, follows that of the Father and the Son, 8 ;
the perpetuation of that of the Son, 12; purchased by our Lord,
11 ; never to cease, 13, 20, 232; obscured by Anglican writers,
8 ; denied by the " Reformation," 24, 138 ; two modes of denial
of, 243 ; in the Church, 231-237 ; necessary to Christianity, 24 ;
leads to the Catholic Church, 9; in the Church, absolute, 240;
in individuals, conditional, 237.

Holy Scripture, part of the Divine Tradition, 5.

Hooker, 40.

Identity, personal, preserved after the Resurrection, 369.
Ignatius, St., his vocation, 183; education, 184; his strong will,

185: humility, 185; simplicity, 185; common sense, 186; his

influence in England, 188.
Immaculate Conception of the B. Virgin Mary, a dogma of faith,

121; compared with other doctrines, 122; its history, 124;

universally believed and taught, 125-130: old in itself, new in

definition, 134 ; illustrates the defining office of the Church, 122 ;

the glory of the nineteenth century, 165.
Individualism in religion, great characteristic of England, 72.
Infallibility, of the Church, fountain of, 5 ; twofold, passive and

active, 292 ; springs from the presence of the Holy Ghost and

the Divine headship of Christ, 4.
Innocent III, 151.
Ireland, the ancient home of faith and of the Saints, 249; her trials,

INDEX. 449

251-4 ; her fidelity and witness to the Faith, 265, 259 ; has twice
given the gift of eternal life to England, 26 ; picture of her
natural and supernatural beauty, 250 ; of her desolation, 257 ;
heroism of her soldiers, 265, 279 ; efforts of Protestantism in,
255.
Isolation, political and religious, the danger of England, 80.

Jesuits, their character and work, 187 ; persecuted in England,

191.
Jesus Christ, His Mystical Body the Church, 293 ; charity of His

Sacred Heart, 91, 159; rejected by men, 174; our example, 175;

the inheritance of His sufferings, 176.
Jurisdiction, how it differs from Order, 349.

Lamoriciere, General, 268.

Lateran, Councils of, 151, 153.

Latitudinarianism in England, 44, 140.

Laud, the Protestant, Archbishop of Canterbury, 40, 44.

Laurence O'Toole, St., 249.

Law of Christian marriage, the root of political society, 33.

Laws, the penal, against Catholics, 69.

Leo, St., 150, 354.

Liberty of action, in the Church, 401.

Lombardy, 81, 97, 280, 379.

Luther, desolated the West, 430.

Lutheranism, 63, 65, 431.

Mahometanism, 97, 274.

Maistre, Count de, 78.

Malachi, St., 249.

Manresa, St. Ignatius at, 183.

Marriage, Christian, the root of political society, 33 ; its disso-
lution the ruin of society, 63.

Martyrdom, causes of, 266, 270, 272, 278 ; misunderstood by the
world, 277; of daily life, 373; sufficient in itself for canonization,

29

450 INDEX.

394 ; the most perfect conformity to Christ, 395 ; proof of cha-
rity, 395 ; of St. Boniface, 438.

Martyrs of Japan, their history, 396-399 ; of the temporal power
of the Holy See, 266.

Mary, the Blessed Virgin, Immaculate Conception of, 121 ; divine
maternity of, 122 ; titles of, 124 ; clothed with the sun, 135.

Melchior, Canus, 6.

Message, Divine, certain and infallible, 3.

Milan, Church of, 316-17 ; council of, 167, 317.

Milner, Bishop, 45.

Mosaic dispensation, 14.

Nangasaki, 398.

Nationalism, the prelude and principle of schism, 29 ; a heresy in
the Kingdom of God, 249 ; the sin of the Protestant Reformation,
30, 431 ; at its greatest height, 182; in politics, 72; destroyer of
the ancient Church in England, 78.

Nestorianism, 26.

Newman, Rev. Dr., 5.

Nicsea, first Council of, 151 ; second Council of, 128.

Normans in England, 29-30.

Oblates of St. Ambrose, 335.

Office of the Holy Ghost, 9, 237, 239 ; denial of, 23, 24.

Opinion, the rule of faith for Protestants, 104.

Orange, Council of, 153.

Order, Sacrament of, 161 ; power of, 349; Divine, of the Church, 66.

Orders, Anglican, invalidity of, 354.

Orders, Religious, of the Church, 159, 289; their spread, 302;

Saints and Popes of, 303 ; history of in England, 291.
Oswald, St., 217.
Oxford Movement, 48.

Paganism, in literature of the sixteenth century, 182.

Pallium, its meaning and intention, 343, 346 ; how made, 345 ; a

INDEX. 45 1

participation in the pastoral office, 348 ; symbol of hierarchical
order, 352 ; pledge of Catholic and Roman unity, 353-54 ; a pro-
test against national pride, 354 ; once received by the Arch-
bishops of Canterbury, 353 ; words of investiture, 355.
Papal aggression tumult, its effects, 60, 76.
Paraclete, see Holy Ghost.
Paris, the English mission at, 384-5.

Patrick, St., his boyhood, vocation and mission, 246-248; confes-
sions of, 248.

Pelagianism removed from England by the Roman Pontiffs, 27.
Penal laws, their tradition dying out, 69.
Penance, Sacrament of, 363.

Peter, St., plenitude of jurisdiction of, 348; the support of the faith
of his brethren, 349 ; the whole flock committed to his care, 349 ;
prerogative of, 26.
Photius, desolated the East, 430.

Pius IX., his Dogmatic Bull on the Immaculate Conception, 121,
129, 131 ; his glorious Pontificate, 165 ; his meekness, 283 ; the
butt of the enmities of the world, 404 ; his hierarchy, 81 .
Popes, line of, 150, 375.

Power, Temporal, of the Holy See, conflict now waging against
79 ; St. Thomas, martyr of, 266 ; the independence of the uni-
versal Church, 272 ; anti-Christian movement against, 61 ;
England the stimulator of agitation against, 65.
Presbyterianism, 36.
Presence, of our Lord in the Church, 4.
Press, public, falsehood of, 276.

Priesthood, a holy, the strength of the Church, 143, 161; recog-
nised by .the Councils of the Church, 161 ; by the Council of
Trent, 161.

Progress of unbelief in England, 25.

Protestantism, its Judaizing tendency, 14 ; the principle of dissolu-
tion, 36 ; its productive principle, 53 ; its ultimate analysis ; 60 ;
consequences of, 139; a rebellion against the authority of the
Church, 138; followed by rationalism, 60-1, 142.

452 INDEX.

Rationalism the logical consequence of Protestantism, 60-1, 142 ;
increasing in England, 25 : its heretical principles, 50 ; of Dr.
Lushingtou's judgment on the " Essays and Reviews," 52, 54 ;
made the test of Scripture, 5 ; of Dr. Colenso, 54 ; or Rome,
60-1.

Reformation, Anglican, causes of, 31, 276 ; progress of, 190 ; prin-
ciples of, 34, 189 ; prolific in schisms and heresies, 42-50 ; robbed
the English people of their faith, 72 ; its history, a traditionary
fable, 1 93 ; sin of, 24, 72 ; a rebellion against the authority of
the Church, 138; consequences of, 139.

Reformation, by the Council of Trent, 154, seq.

Resurrection, of the Body, mystery and analogies of, 366 ; its
glory, 367 ; continues personal identity, 368 ; renews the home
of our childhood, 370.

Resurrection of Christ, perfection of His work and Person, 361 ; a
living and inexhaustible power, 362 ; by which we rise from the
dead, 363 ; by which lost merit is restored, 364.

Resurrection, of the Dry Bones, 415.

Revelation, Divine, sustained by the presence of the Holy Ghost,
24 ; its own evidence, 209.

Revolution, anti-Catholic, England the head of, 64 ; spread of,
273, 404.

Rhd, confraternity of the Christian Doctrine in, 321.

Rome, city of, ancient, 113, 140, 228.

Rome, city of, modern, revolution in, 267 ; defended by the Faith-
ful, 268 ; its appearance at the canonization of the Japanese
Martyrs, 405.

Rome, See of, the sole source of stability in Christian faith, 26 ;
separation from, the cause of Religious anarchy in England, 25 ;
the test of Faith, 34 ; Primacy of, 349 ; its influence in England,
78; only alternative with Rationalism, 60; its Temporal Power,
79, 266, 272 ; its supernatural strength, 229 ; centre of Chris-
tendom, 274 ; centre of the Hierarchy, 300, 351 ; object of attack,
280; judge of Doctrine, 302 ; uniting all in charity, 305, 348 ;
mother of all churches, 352 ; source of Catholic Unity, 353, 354 ;

INDEX. 453

immutability of, 26 ; Sovereign Pontiffs of, 422 ; cleansed Eng-
land from Pelagianism, 27.

Sacrament, of Penance, 363 : of Baptism, 8, 9.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, foundation of charity, 91, 159; devotion
of, 160.

Saints, their life a transcript of the love of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, 93, 159; their witness to the Holy Name of Jesus, 180;
source of their strength, 230 ; their various vocations, 298 ; their
several glories, 311 ; communion of, 391 ; their rank in Heaven,
373 ; canonization of, 393 ; invocation of sanctioned by canoniza-
tion, 396.

St. Agnes, 343.

St. Alphonsus, 298.

St. Ambrose, 354.

St. Anselm, 160, 179, 353.

St. Athanasius, 178.

St. Augustine of Canterbury, 215, 423.

St. Augustine of Hippo, 118, 233, 238, 240.

St. Avitus, 351.

St. Bede, 120.

St. Benedict, 227, 288, 298, 302.

St. Bernard, 135, 160, 233.

St. Bernardine, 160, 373.

St. Bonaventure, 126, 143, 160.

St. Boniface, 425, 426, 435, 436.

St. Camillus, 298.

St. Charles, 306, 313.

St. Cyprian, 26, 177, 264, 348.

St. Dominic, 227, 298.

St. Edmund, 30, 217.

St. Edward the Confessor, 29, 217.

St. Eleutherius, 422.

St. Francis of Assisi, 298.

St. Francis of Sales, 160.

454

HST)EX.

St. Francis Xavier, 397.

St. Gregory I, the Great, 76, 150, 214-221, 274, 351, 423.

St. Gregory VII, 150.

St. Gregory Nazlanzum, 233.

St. Ignatius, 183, 228, 298, 306, 313.

St. Irenaeus, 240.

St. Killian, 249.

St. Laurence O'Toole, 249.

St. Leo, 150, 354.

St. Malachi, 249.

St. Michael de Sanctis, 396.

St. Oswald, 217.

St. Patrick, 247.

St. Peter Baptist, 398.

St. Peter's Pence, origin of, 28.

St. Philip, 306, 313.

St. Richard of Chichester, 30, 218.

St. Thomas, Apostle, 197, 212.

St. Thomas Aquinas, 160.

St. Thomas of Canterbury, 30, 179.

St. Vincent de Paul, 372.

St. Wilbrord, 429.

St. Willibald, 429.

St. Winnibald, 429.

Sanctity, participation of the Divine Nature, 400.

Saxon element in England, its character, 74, 75, 178, 427.

Schism punished by schism, 37 38 ; the principle of, 29.

Scripture, Holy, part of the tradition of the Church, 5.

Seminaries, their establishment obligatory by the Council of

Trent, 161.
Society, Christian, its four bases, 33 ; dissolved by the violation of

Marriage, 63 ; of two kinds, natural and supernatural, 273.
Socinianism, 45.
Spain, 26, 39, 97, 379.
Spoleto, defence of, 269.

INDEX. 455

Theology, dogmatic, the science of God, 132 ; its origin and deve-
lopment, 227, 295 ; the queen of sciences, 296.

Theology, mystical, science of the saints, 296.

Thomas, St., the Apostle, 197, 212.

Thomas, St., of Canterbury, 30, 179.

Thomas, St., Aquinas, 160.

Tillotson, 45.

Tractarian movement, the, 48.

Tradition, of the Church, 5 ; Divine, necessary to a Divine com-
mission, 3.

Trent, Council of, a recapitulation, 152; a reformation, 154, 317
a reconstruction, 155 ; the council of active charity, 157 : of the
hierarchy and the priesthood, 160 ; decreed the formation of se-
minaries, 161; directed by St. Charles, 316; has ruled the
Church for three hundred years, 152.

Trinity, the Blessed, doctrine of, 233.

Truths, three pervading this volume, viz., (1) Presence of our Di-
vine Lord in His Church; (2) The organization and fruitfulness
of the visible Church ; (3) The office of the Holy Ghost in the
Church as a Teacher, 4.

Unbelief in England, progress of, 25.

Union, of the Holy Ghost with the Church, 19.

Unity, of Saxon England, 28.

Unity, of the Church, springs from the presence of the Holy Ghost,
5 ; the result and organ of certainty, 17 ; a revelation of Divine
power, 94 ; in diversity, 291 : in the See of Rome, 351 ; the re-
sult and organ of certainty, 17.

Universality, of the Church,, 405.

Vicissitudes of Christianity in England, 27.

Vincent of Paul, St., 372.

Vision of God, follows the vision of faith, 372.

Wellington, Duke of, his prediction in regard to England, 79, 80.
Westminster, first Council of, 110; second, 119; third, 163.

456 INDEX.

Whitgift, founder of the Protestant Hierarchical School, 40, 43.

Will, human, its relation to faith, 212; its freedom, 238 ; its coope-
ration necessary, 213, 237; how put on probation, 239.

World, its enmity to the Church, 178, 181 ; a hindrance to faith,
212.

.
Zainglias, 43.

JAMES MOOEB, Printer, 2, Crampton Quay, Dublin.

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